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PKICT 10 CltiVl'S. 



MURDER 


MANSLAUGHTER? 


By HELEN B. MATHERS, 


17 to 27 VaNdeWater St 
•^EWTo^- 


Hl> 


Seaside Library, Pocket Edition, Issue! 


ekty. By subscription $50 per annum, 


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P. 0. Box 3751. 17 to 27 Vandewater St, N. T. 


Murder or Manslaughter? 


A NOVEL . 


- ^ b v . 

By HELEN B. MATHERS. 




NEW YORK: 

GEORGE MUNRO, PUBLISHER, 

n to 27 Vandewater Street. 


HELEN B. AlATHERS’S WORKS 


CONTAINED IN THE SEASIDE LIBRARY (POCKET EDITION) : 


No. PRICE. 

13 Eyre’s Acquittal 10 

221 Cornin’ Tliro’ the Rye ....... 20 

438 Found Out 10 

635 Murder or Manslaughter? ...... 10 



MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER? 


PART I. 


“There are in human hearts battle-fields as grand as Thermopylae, 
as great as Waterloo.” 


CHAPTER I. 

AT LADISLOES. 

Some eight or nine people are sitting in a circle upon a 
square of carpet, set in the exact center of the oak floor 
upon which the Gunpowder Plot was hatched in the year 
of grace 1605. 

It is almost a family party — or appears one — but the 
women have put on their most swagger stockings and their 
smartest shoes, though these are invisible, as some offi- 
cious person has brought a large fur rug and covered up 
the same, so that all have an absurd air of being tucked up 
in low frocks, and glazed shirts, and expected to go to sleep, 
though nothing is further from everybody’s intention. 

In the great iron cage yonder a royal fire of logs is 
blazing, away to the left stands the iron-bound chest in 
which for over a score of years lay the murdered body of 
a groom, voiceless and deaf in the midst of the life that 
played around him. In great book-shelves that range well- 
nigh from floor to ceiling are thousands of volumes, whose 
bindings are dim with age, but their contents fresh as our 
latest utterances, as fresh as the love-letters found the 


6 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


other day by Hetty in the chest — hundreds of years old, 
but fervent, passionate, adoring, beyond the reach of any 
modern nineteenth-century lover. 

Against the unshuttered window-panes millions of snow- 
flakes are beating, like ghosts with feeble hands, as if*they 
longed to enter, and sprinkle and shroud the laughing ring 
of faces around the rug yonder. 

“ When are we going to begin ?” cries Hetty, “and how 
do you begin? It must be quite fifty years since either of 
us played the game.” 

“ You throw a slipper,” began Jemmy St. Asaph, who 
was the nearest approach to a “ fripon ” present. 

“ Wouldn’t a pump do?” said Christabel, with an air 
of innocent inquiry. 

“ Somebody would be sure to sit on it,” said Jemmy, 
after peeping at his elegant extremities, “and it’s hunt- 
the-slipper— not the pump. Now, Mrs. Booth, you 
started the game, and you must begin it. But we are all 
so comfortable” — he stole, a look at Christabel, but she 
was inclining her ear just then to the young man whose 
dark face, with blue enigmatical eyes, was uncommonly 
near her shoulder. 

“Comfortable!” ejaculated Mrs. Booth, as she sprung 
up, and, unlatching her shoe, sent it flying in the midst 
of the company with such vigor that it promptly rebounded 
from Sir Asaph’s head to Chummy’s nose, thence to a 
lady’s lap, only to be snatched therefrom, and landed in 
her brother-in-law’s bosom, whence it was rescued by 
Hetty’s nimble fingers, only to start off on wilder travels 
than before. 

Every woman is at heart a romp; she enjoys the evasions, 
the swift feints, the surprises, the struggle for mastery, and 
the ardor of pursuit, the elan of attack, the subtle joy of 
resistance, aud above all, she loves to do you, and look as 
innocent as an angel- while she is executing some sly trick 
that finally routs you! Now, in “ Hunt the Slipper,” 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? T 

that may be respectable, but is never dull; every romping 
instinct of man and woman comes into full play. You 
must be alive at every point; not the wink of an eyelash 
must distract you for an instant from your .dogged de- 
termination not to be beaten (if you are the hunter), and 
your equally fixed resolve (if you are the hunted) not to 
give up the slipper to which you so dishonestly stick. 

Sometimes the hunter stands within the magic circle* 
sometimes without; anon his itching fingers close on the 
slipper, only to feel it instantly wrenched away. Again 
he descends with an eage-like swoop that stretches him 
flat on the defender’s body, from which he rises empty- 
handed, while from the opposite side of the ring the smart 
tap-tap of a high heel on polished boards turns him like a 
magnet, and, rushing to the spot, he is met only by a 
lovely smile, as Beauty passes the coveted morsel behind 
her back! Sometimes it is a narrow squeak, and the 
slipper flies past his ear far beyond the circle, and, leaping 
out of it, he is raced neck-and-neck by a defender, and if 
both are men, they roll over and over in desperate strug- 
gle till the slipper flies up in the air, and is pounced upon* 
and instantly hidden if the defender has gained the victory. 

The rug has long ago vanished into space, and lightning 
glimpses of silken hose might have flashed all too briefly 
upon the sight, had any of those present eyes for anything 
but a yellow satin shoe, and the woman who was trying 
to regain possession of it. Swifter eye and lighter foot no- 
hunter ever had than she, yet, at the end of two lightning 
minutes, she was empty-handed still, and stood for a 
moment breathless, in the midst of those who had sus- 
tained injuries, more or less grievous, in the detention of 
her property. 

Chummy’s nose bore witness to the vigor of her address, 
while on Hetty’s forehead was the red impression of a 
heel; St. Asaph’s braces had gone off like fire-works, while- 
explosions of hooks and eyes, and unripping of seams, had 


8 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


passed unnoticed in the furore of the game, until the pause 
in the pursuer gave a moment’s breathing time to count 
up the bruises and damages received. 

Hetty, with all her beautiful hair wildly disheveled, 
was carefully feeling her sides, to make sure whether it 
were her ribs, not her stays, that had got broken. The 
quietest person present, who had, against his will, been 
drawn into the vortex of the game, was passing his fingers 
over a slightly bald cranium, in search of new bumps, pos- 
sibly developed by his wife’s agency, and turning over in 
his mind a treatise on the truth of Carlyle’s axiom, that 
England’s population consists mostly of fools. 

But, as a greater than he had 

4t Shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff, 

When they talked of their Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff,” 

so Mr. Booth paused in the examination of his cranium 
to observe, with some displeasure, the wife who stood be- 
fore him. She was twisting one long, loose plait of hair 
between her fingers, as her eyes searched the faces around 
for some sign of guilt, but all were innocent as cherubs, 
and her husband’s the most innocent of all, for if he did 
not know the contents of his coat-tail pockets, how should 
she f 

“I can wait,” she said, and down she sat in the middle 
of the circle, the shoes of the men and women precipitate- 
ly withdrawing to make room for her. 

One unslippered foot was crossed on the other, and she 
hugged it, as if lamenting the covering of which the cob- 
bler had cheated her. For the first time her eyes drifted 
from the circle of faces to the night-blackened window- 
panes beyond, and a look of yearning, of longing, came 
into her eyes, and paled her cheeks and lips, while her 
attitude suddenly became rigid, as if arrested by some- 
thing she saw beyond, invisible to all others. 

You might have slapped the slipper’s heel on the ground 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER? 9 

by her side a dozen times before she heard you; the bound- 
ing, vigorous nymph was gone, and the woman, timid, 
apprehensive, had taken her place. 

It was at this moment that a door at the far end of the 
vast room opened, and an almost inaudible voice an- 
nounced, “ Mr. Hugo Holt.” 

Faint as was the announcement, it seemed to explode 
like a bomb among the company. The hour was so late, 
the visit so unexpected, the man so famous; and pray 
what did he at that hour of night in cette galere ? 

A breath of cold wind seemed to rush in and advance 
with him as he came forward to meet Hetty, who was a 
perfect hostess first, and a wondering woman second, so 
that she received him as an expected guest, while Chum- 
my forgot his nose in the welcome that he never failed to 
extend to every soul, rich or poor, who came within the 
gates of Ladisloes. 

“I was in your neighborhood,” said Mr. Holt, “'and 
ventured, though so late, to come in and see you for half 
an hour.” 

But, as he spoke, his eyes scanned the ring of faces, 
and missed one; though he discovered that of Mr. Booth, 
who was at the moment exploring his coat-tail pocket for 
a bundle of notes on the Anthropological era, instead of 
which, to his amazement, he produced the frivolity of 
— a woman’s slipper. 

No matter where Mrs. Booth’s heart and ears had 
been a moment ago, her eyes were still about her, and, 
like an arrow, she darted at her scientific spouse, but only 
to find his hand empty, while, with perturbed coun- 
tenance, he searched his other pocket, and the game flew 
on without him. 

The new arrival sat down next his hostess, without in- 
vitation, and proved himself the most vigilant, audacious 
player present. 

And if Mrs. Booth had hitherto played the game con 


10 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


amove, as she did most things, she now played it with the 
set, obstinate determination of a demon who was not to 
be beaten — even by Hugo Holt. Perhaps the noise was 
less, but the excitement more intense for his advent, which 
was odd and unusual, and in some occult way influenced 
the nerves of those present, so that, to parody an old 
verse, 

‘ Each felt, lie knew not why, 

More mad than he had done before.” 

All save Mr. Booth, who had roused himself to bow to the 
new arrival and skip to the fireside, whence he prosecuted 
those researches for which the future, not the present age ? 
will be grateful. Presently something unaccustomed in 
the atmosphere smote him chilly, and he looked up to see 
his wife and Hugo Holt racing each other to where, like 
an oasis in the sea of oak, showed a satin slipper. 

He is ahead of her — he has reached it surely, when at 
his very feet she seems to fall, and, rolling over and over, 
seizes it, and, 

“Beaten!” she cries, as, dark and stern, he stands look- 
ing down upon her. 

He stoops, and kisses her hand. 

A minute more and the room is empty, or so it seems 
to a woman who, sitting apart, fits absently on her foot a 
satin shoe. 


CHAPTER II. 

“ Perhaps ’tis pretty to force together 
Thoughts so all unlike each other; 

To mutter and mock a broken charm, 

To dally with wrong that does no harm. ’ 

Edgar Booth stood by the fire-place, an air of disap- 
probation stamped on his face at the late too liberal exhi- 
bition of his wife’s silk stockings. 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 11 

“ Who is Hugo Holt?” exclaimed Ohristabel, as the door 
closed on Chummy and his unseasonable guest. 

“ He is one of the most successfr 1 men of the day — ” 

“ And one of the most unscrupulous — ” 

“ With the quietest manners — ” 

“ And the most daring ambition—” 

“With an enormous income — ” 

“ And a wife who spends it — ” 

“ And so discreet a flirt that he has never been compro- 
mised by a woman in his life!” 

“ He does not give me the idea of a man prone to fall 
jn love easily,” said Hetty, who wore an unusual air of 
meditation as she still sat on the floor. 

“He is plain,” said Ohristabel, who had a model of 
good looks in her own mind that did not resemble Hugo 
Holt. 

“ He is beautiful,” said Beryl, addressing her shoe, and 
only her shoe heard it. 

“ No,” said Hetty, “ he is not plain. He is grave, cer- 
tainly, and there is something austere about him — but he 
looks grand seigneur — and there is something in his face 
that I should like to find out*” 

“ His character, like his face, would require a good deal 
of hard reading,” said St. Asaph, in his pleasant voice; 
‘•for even his friends, and they are countless as his ene- 
mies, don’t understand him.” 

“ But why is he called unscrupulous?” said ChristabeL 
“ He has mastered the fact that a man must either take 
advantage of the folly of those around him, or he must 
himself be a fool, and reap the reward of one, to the end 
of his days. He prefers to master his world, to be rich, 
which means to be independent; and no doubt the yelping 
of the curs that run by his carriage-wheels amuses him. 
He has the temperament that can support hatred but not 
pity—” 

“ But it is a highly nervous temperament,” struck in 


12 MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

Hetty, cutting short St. Asaph’s words; “his hand trem- 
bled as it took mine.” 

“ That is no sign of weakness,” said Mr. Booth, unex- 
pectedly, “but of an intensely nervous and sensitive or- 
ganization. He is as brave a fellow as ever lived — and 
with a demon of a temper,” he added, meditatively. 

“ I have never seen it,” said Beryl, who had impercept- 
ibly approached. 

“ Ask his chief clerk,” said St. Asaph, dryly, “ when 
he is almost buried beneath the briefs that his master 
might accept if he could be in half a dozen courts at 
once. If the machinery that underlies the vast adminis- 
tration of his business is one hair’s-breadth out of gear, 
woe betide the luckless underling who has caused it!” 

“I can not imagine him in a passion,” said Berry, 
coldly; “ he is too self-contained — ” 

“He is never angry,” said St. Asaph, “he is simply 
unapproachable. A cold shade seems to cross his face — 
that is all.” 

“ But what brought him here to-night?” said the young 
barrister present; “has anybody of special consequence 
in the neighborhood committed a murder, and Holt come 
down to get up the facts for the defense?” 

“ There is no one lively enough in this neighborhood to 
commit a murder,” said Hetty, shrugging her shoulders; 
“ he probably came in on his way back to town after din- 
ing with Lord L ” 

“ There he found the best company and the worst mor- 
als in England,” said St. Asaph, “ while here ” — he glanced 
around — “ he finds a better host, and all the moralities.” 

“ You mean that he came to take us as a wholesome cor- 
rective to his evening’s dissipation?” said Hetty, dryly, as 
with her arm through Beryl’s she led the way down the 
stairs, and across the great halls, ceilinged, floored, and 
walled with blackest oak, and all blooming and beautiful 
with holly, and great boughs of ivy with its darker flower. 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


13 


But I know better,” she added in her friend’s ear; “ lie 
came twenty miles out of his way to-night to hunt the 
slipper with you.” 

“ And he did not get it,” said Berry, and laughed as 
they turned into Chummy’s study, where jokes and cheer- 
ful chat were wont to go by till the small hours of the 
morning. 

But Hetty looked thoughtful as she disposed herself 
upon the couch always held sacred by herself and Berry 
when the latter was visiting at Laaisloes. 

It was an understood thing that the two had under- 
standings, jokes, secrets, and stories that they must dis- 
cuss in private, and fine enjoyment they appeared to get 
out of the same. Perhaps they were aware, too, of the 
charming contrast they made, though in their dispositions 
they strongly resembled each other; and it would be diffi- 
cult to say which was more refreshingly naif in her speech, 
or showed a more savage simplicity in discussing and going 
to the root of all matters that came under her discussion* 

“ If you did not wish me to suspect something, you 
should have said, ‘ How do you do?’ when he came, and 
4 good-bye!’ when he went,” whispered Hetty soon in her 
friend’s ear. 

“ What should you suspect?” said Berry. 

“ That you have fallen in love at last — and with Hugo 
Holt.” 

“ He has fallen in love with me,” said Berry, laughing; 
and her laugh was something good to hear, gurgling as a 
child’s, with a child’s mischief and fun in it. “ But I’m 
afraid. Hetty — I’m afraid ” — she stopped, and her face 
changed; she looked over her shoulder as if she saw some 
grisly specter behind her — “ I’m afraid that I am a little 
in love with him.” 

Hetty looked at her friend earnestly, and something 
pure and virginal in her figure, in her eyes, struck her. 
There was a quiver in the little apple in Berry’s upper lip 


14 MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

that suggested rather a girl on the brink of her first con- 
fession than a woman years married, who had always 
shunned flirtation, and whose motto had been: “ Becomes 
too near who comes to he denied .” 

“ Where is the governess ?” said Chummy, approaching 
with the tumblers he had been mixing. 

“ She dined not wisely but too well," said Berry, in an 
undertone. “ Did you not more than once during the 
game see her supporting your brother-in-law’s head on her 
shoulder? But how can you blame her? You know he 
can only hear when you speak to him on the top of his 
head !” 

But the flippancy of her words did not disguise a certain 
weariness in her voice and air that attracted Mr. Booth’s 
attention, and he crossed over to pat her head fondty, then 
allowed her unusual dejection to slide into the more in- 
teresting subject of the pathology of the human race. 

“ How they are laughing over there!” exclaimed Berry 
as he moved away, and she looked across to the corner of 
the room where Christabel turned a face like a petulant 
white flower alternately upon her right and left adorer. 

“ It is about a little boy,” said St. Asaph, rising and 
approaching his hostess. “He was about six years old 
and suffered tortures from toothache. He was taken to a 
dentist and four or five teeth were removed. He bore the 
agony like a man and never made a sound. When it was 
over he got down out of the chair and looked up at the 
dentist. ‘D — n you!’ he said, and walked out.” 

“ It’s very good,” said Hetty, when she had recovered 
herself; “ but I’ll tell you something nearly as good. 
Chummy was asleep one Sunday afternoon, and some 
bores came down from town to call. They most particu- 
larly wished to see him, but I assured them that he was 
not to be disturbed. ‘ Let Lola go and see if he is awake?’ 
they pleaded, so I let her go. She came back, stood in 
the middle of the room, and said in a loud, distinct voice. 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


15 


c Daddy’s sound asleep.’ Then she came up to me, and in 
a terrible whisper said, ‘That’s what he told me to say!”’ 

Jemmy St. Asaph skipped back to Christabel under 
cover of the laughter that followed, and Llewellyn Poore 
got up and sat down a little nearer the sofa. Only an 
acute observer might have seen that he was studying Mrs. 
Booth, and have wondered why he suddenly found her so 
interesting. Perhaps he was looking for a reason why 
Hugo Holt had come there that night, for that the great 
man had done so without a purpose was incompatible with 
Hugo Holt’s shrewd practical character. As a pleader he 
displayed no flowers of ornate speech; he^ saw his road 
straight before him and pursued it to the end, unswayed 
by sentiment, and untouched by regard for the feelings of 
others. Too busy for romance, too canny to allow unprof- 
itable pleasures to interfere for a moment with his success, 
it was quite in his way that he should affect to admire a 
woman who, like himself, had succeeded young, but who 
had failed from a money point of view as signally as he 
had succeeded. 

She would swell the circle of notabilities at his table, as 
she would adorn it with her grace, but somehow Mrs. 
Booth did not suggest the idea of lending herself so easily 
to gratuitous adornment to an admirer’s state. 

She was rather a woman C( who mocks herself at you,” 
to translate literally a French phrase, and she was per- 
fectly sure of herself and her position, and supremely in- 
different to the banal compliments that she heard every 
day in town. She had succeeded so you^ig, so easily! 
She was so triply blessed with the dower of youth, genius, 
love, that fortune seemed outlavish when she threw 
beauty also into the scales, and gave at least enough wealth 
to keep that beauty undimmed by a daily struggle with 
pounds, shillings, and pence. 

And when at last the party broke up for the night, 
Llewellyn Poore had comedo the decision that if Hugo 


16 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


Holt had really fallen in love, he was likely to get the 
worst lesson he had ever had in his life, at the hand of 
Beryl Booth. 


CHAPTER III. 

“ I looked to heaven and tried to pray, 

But or ever a prayer had gush’t, 

A wicked whisper came and made 
My heart as dry as dust.” 

The men had spent the following days in snipe-shoot- 
ing, that is to say, the whole of the day in walking 
after snipe, and the whole of the next in recovering from 
their exertions. 

On the second day, when the snow had cleared away 
from the ugly Essex flats, Hetty and Berry put on cloaks 
and hats, and sallied forth into the garden, all unworthy 
of the stately Elizabethan house that far and wide was 
known as Ladisloes. But Hetty was an ardent gardener, 
and wont to fire the outdoor servants by her own ex- 
ample, so behold her now throwing back her cloak to 
seize a spade, while Berry flaunts a pickax; and while 
their bones and stays creak responsive, together they at- 
tack a long, low mound of earth, half leveled before 
Christmas had come to interrupt the work. 

Christabel has disappeared with her swains, and 
Chummy, nearly as much in love with her as they are, 
has followed. Ho one has seen a newspaper for four days, 
and they are bound to the nearest village where there is 
a public-house, and in that public-house they will find a 
paper, and there they will drink small beer and read it, 
and bring home the news it contains in their heads. 

Edgar Booth is lodged so warmly in the bosom of 
Science that he does not feel the coldness of his feet as 
he sits reading in the library, so full of jocund din and 
mirth some fifty hours ago. 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 17 

And Berry and Hetty are tete-a-tete for an indefinite 
time, and Berry knows that her moment has come. In 
Tain she has shirked odd opportunities for special gossip, 
in vain she has cut short their half-hours before the 
men came up at night, in which Hetty visited her dress- 
ing-room, finally disappearing with a long wake behind 
her of bustle, plaits, hair-pins, stays and ornaments, as 
Edgar Booth, fair and handsome, made his appearance, 
too abstracted to observe anything uncommon in his 
hostess’s appearance. 

“Business first and pleasure after, as the man said who 
kissed his wife first, and buried his mother-in-law after,” 
said Hetty, after five minutes’ toil that flooded her cheeks 
with carmine, and loosened all the bright hair about her 
brow. 

“ What is the pleasure?” said Berry, leaning on her 
pickax and looking a little paler tfian her wont. 

A chilly wind was blowing up from the distant marshes. 
Far away could faintly be heard a Woolwich gun, and if 
there had been no mist, you might have dimly made out 
the topmasts of the great ships as they passed down the 
river. Involuntarily she shivered, and somehow she never 
thought of Ladisloes again with its armies of roses, or its 
great tiger-tinted sheets of wallflower, but as it looked 
then as she waited for her friend’s reply. 

But she did not get it immediately, for Hetty had 
turned aside to harangue Howtyego and Thorowgood, two 
two of her gardeners, and Berry endeavored to stifle a 
smile — as with exquisite dignity and a hat cocked rakishly 
over one eye, Hetty instructed them upon subjects of 
which she was entirely ignorant. Having dismissed them 
with the natural air of an empress, she had leisure for 
Berry, on whose face she discovered some traces of enjoy- 
ment, and into the causes of which she promptly inquired. 

“ Hetty!” said Berry, “ you are delicious. One minute 
you are Mrs. Malaprop, the next you are a princess. But 


18 MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

there is always a lovely simplicity about you; and if there 
was one woman in the world whom I would trust with a 
secret, it might be you.’’ 

“ Have you one?” cried Hetty, startled. 

“ Perhaps.” 

“Oh! there is no guilt there!” exclaimed Hetty, look- 
ing earnestly at her companion’s blooming face, and tuck- 
ing Berry’s hand under her arm, they moved forward upon 
the prowl she had been meditating. 

“Ho,” said Berry, “and there never shall be!” 

Did not the words, the look, the chilly atmosphere, 
come back many a time in the future to Hetty when dark 
seas of crime and dishonor rolled between her and the 
woman who spoke? 

It was Hetty who shivered now as they took their way 
along the graveled walk that formed a huge square and 
shut in the formal flower-beds and all the glories that she 
fully intended to be visible next spring. 

At present all was an arid, sodden waste, and not a bee 
ventured out of the wooden box that, well swathed and 
protected, stood at the sunniest angle of the wall. Once 
Beryl had looked in, and the writhing, ceaseless convolu- 
tions of the orange and gold bodies had appalled her — it 
all seemed so useless, so blind in its labor and result, and 
she dreamed of them that night. 

“ Let us go to the rooks,” said Berry, and they went, 
finding them presently in the long avenue that led to the 
house. 

Only a few were uttering their soothing caw! caw! but 
in the leafless boughs above were resting last year’s nests. 
Rooks are the finest conservatives in the land; they never 
build on the grounds of a nouveau riche ; a place must be 
hundreds of years old or you will not find them near it; 
and if the ancestral owner lets his acres to a vulgar fellow, 
the rooks will desert it so long as he is there. 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 19 

“ And now,” said Hetty, stopping suddenly, “you will 
tell me all about it.” 

“ What is there to tell?” said Berry. 

“Only that you have changed — that you are secure and 
insolent in your pride of youth and fame no longer!” 

“ Was I ever insolent?” cried Berry. 

“A little. And you kept men at arm’s-length always* 
You were perfectly charming to them; they never knew 
that they were kept at arm’s-length; but you found it 
quite easy to be virtuous, since you had suffered no man 
near enough to tempt you.” 

“No,” said Berry; and if her voice was gentle, her 
looks were proud. “ I did my frisking when I was young, 
and do not wish to imitate those modern Helens who 
begin seriously at thirty-five, and leave off at sixty.” 

“ But you are not thirty yet,” exclaimed Hetty, “ and 
you are tempted at last. And it is only metal that has 
been tried seven times in the fire that is proof!” 

“ I have been tried six at least,” said Berry, with a 
laugh that had a touch of rue in it, “ and I am not afraid 
that I shall fail at the seventh. Hetty ” — she stopped 
short in her walk and looked earnestly at her friend — 

“I can’t talk over my husband — even to you. It sug- 
gests two washer-women drinking tea out of saucers with 
their elbows on the table — but you know how careless he 
has been — a pat on the head now and then, a kind word 
always, but entirely wrapped up in his own thoughts and 
pursuits, never noticing if I am sick or sorry, never even 
looking at the work I do. And for years and years I have 
said to him, ‘I shall fall in love one of these days — oh, I 
know I shall!’ But oh, Hetty, you must have fallen out 
of love with one person before you can fall into it with 
another. There is no room in a full heart for another 
passion — and I suppose that mine was empty without my 
knowing it — ” 

She paused, and her voice broke. 


20 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


“ Bui; whose fault was it, Hetty — ivhose ?” 

“ His /” said Hetty, sternly; “ a man had far better care 
for a woman’s heart and soul than for her body! I would 
rather live in a pig-sty with a man who studied and 
cherished me, than in a palace with one who hung me 
with diamonds and did not try to understand me. But 
when did you meet him f” 

“ It was on business for my husband that I first saw 
him. As he took my hand, a shock ran through it to my 
heart, but he did not feel it; his face was grave, inscruta- 
ble, as he questioned me. I had not even grasped his 
features, his expression, when I left him; but, bit by bit, 
memory reproduced his face, and when I was working, or 
when I lay awake between the night and morning, I saw 
him.” 

“ But how often did you see him in the flesh?” 

“ Hardly ever, and only twice alone.” 

“ It is only a fancy,”- said Hetty, “ and it will pass. 
You are too tough to take anything more than a caprice.” 

“ No,” said Berry, “ it will not — it will grow. I strug- 
gle, I fight against it, but his dark face comes between 
me and the sunshine, between me and my prayers, and I 
can only see, and remember him, and long to see him again. 
You know how good I have been,” she went on with still 
that touch of rue in her voice, “ how I never flirted, per- 
haps because I knew how little truth and sincerity there 
would be in the vows of any man who chose to fancy that 
he admired me. I was sometimes shocked, startled, by 
things said to me at dinner-tables or balls, but no one 
ever said them to me a second time; and I have always 
scorned those foolish, weak women whom I met every day 
who had been unhappy in their husbands, and, unable to 
live without sympathy, had taken a lover. This man is 
not my lover — he never will be, but he has crept into some 
empty chamber of my heart — and he will stay — ” 

“No! he will not; you will change,” said Hetty; “the 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

fever will wear itself out, and you will be yourself again. 
In every woman’s life there comes such a crisis as this — ” 

“■Then you had yours?” cried Berry, turning her eyes 
on Hetty. 

“ Perhaps; but remember this — that he will forget, 
while you remember. It is the law of our existence that 
we are something, anything, nothing to the man we love, 
while he is — everything. Even if he loves you, remember 
this: II y a toujour s une autre — so make yourself that 
other if you can.” 

“ That is what I should like to be,” said Berry, her 
hands tightly folded on her restless heart. “I only want 
to see him sometimes, to hear his voice — but I feel no 
longingfor him to love me; I do not desire that he should 
be happy through me; my love is selfish, it feeds itself, 
and demands no sustenance from him. I know no more 
of his nature, his disposition, his heart, than of the merest 
stranger’s; so that it is a piece of pure madness — ” 

“ That you know uncommonly well how to hide,” said 
Hetty dryly; “for I must confess that you did not show 
many signs of surrender the other night, or of the self- 
effacing attitude of worship that you mention.” 

“ I knew when he came,” said Berry, “ for the room 
was full; and I knew when he went away, for the room 
was empty.” 

“ And how do you suppose he will read these signs that 
you are aware of his presence?” said Hetty; “ it is a bad 
thing for a man to know he has complete control of a 
woman’s heart— it is more than common and less than 
cheap, when it falls into his lap so easily.” 

“Has it fallen?” said Berry; “ I don’t know. I may 
love him, but that is nothing to him. If he loves me — ” 
She paused. 

“What then?” said Hetty. 

“It would be just the same,” said Berry; “ we are for 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

ever divided — and so, perhaps, I am less guilty than I 
seem.” 

“ My dear,” cried Hetty, “give it up — it will only end 
in misery — you can’t alter men’s natures, and you can’t 
alter ours. All men should love — but no women. They 
have the joys, we the penalties, of success. And in a 
year’s time, Berry, you will have forgotten it all, and 
found out that home ties are strongest — as he has found 
it out ages ago!” 

“ I hope so,” said Berry, “ but from what I have heard, 
I should not think his wife was any sort of companion to 
him.” 

“ What is she like?” 

“I have never seen her. We have exchanged cards 
more than once, but never met — however, we dine there 
next week.” 

“ Don’t betray yourself!” cried Hetty. 

Berry laughed. 

“I am not more afraid for my self-control than for his. 
And I think he has most self-control of any man I ever 
knew.” 

“That argues immense strength.” 

“ Yes,” said Berry, in a dreamy tone, “he must be 
very strong, or he could not influence me as he has done. 
But, Hetty, since last night, I am convinced that in some 
way you will have a great influence over my fate.” 

“ If you mean that I shall try and save you from Hugo 
Holt, I certainly shall have that influence,” said Hetty 
warmly. “ My dear child, why couldn’t you fall in love 
regularly every year, or every month, like any other woman 
of fashion? But to take it in this violent form is — dan- 
gerous!” 

“I am not a woman of fashion,” said Berry, “ and I 
should never come to you to save you from myself — no one 
can do that for another person. But, last night, in my 
sleep I got up, crossed the corridor, and knocked at your 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 23 

door. You did not answer, and I woke up shuddering 
and shivering in the darkness, and argued with myself a 
long while; then I seemed to remember that I had beeii 
walking in my sleep, and I groped my way back to my 
room. But even then I knew that some awful necessity, 
some urgent dread, had sent me to you — that I had gone 
to you to be saved from — Hugo Holt.’’ 

Berry’s face was very pale in the morning light; the 
sadness in her eyes, the sweetness of her mouth had never 
shown more vividly than then; she looked like a woman 
predestined to doom, but to an innocent one, not a guilty. 

“ Can’t you get over it?” said Hetty; “ and. after all, 
it is only animal magnetism, and as long as yotf keep out 
of his sight you are safe.” 

“ No,” said Berry, “ I am safe in his presence, but out 
of it, he draws my thoughts, my soul, my very body to 
him.” 

“ And do you draw his?” said Hetty. 

“ No — I seldom see him in my sleep. But if I do, his 
face and voice are as vivid as if I saw him with my living 
eyes. And I wake up to find myself beside a peacefully 
snoring husband — ” 

“Dull, but safe,” said Hetty. 

“ And I curse myself for a wicked woman, and I pray 
— but it doesn’t help me; though lately, Hetty, I have 
prayed for him,” 

“ He needs it,” said Hetty, emphatically; “ for though 
he may be a very brilliant man, I don’t believe he is a good 
one. Of course, the more wicked a man is, the more de- 
lightful he is — but his delightfulness costs us women too 
dear. And, my dear, we have an old proverb in Somerset- 
shire about lovers — 1 By keeping them off, you keep them 
on.’” 

“ Then, hadn’t I better encourage him a little, so that 
he may be frightened away?” said Berry, with a flash of 


24 MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

the dare-devil light in her eyes that had been there when 
she played hunt-the-slipper. 

“ Certainly, if you can keep your head cool. The mo- 
ment he finds that you are like the other women that he 
meets every day, your charm will be gone, and he will 
leave you in peace.” 

Berry did not answer; she had turned her head aside to 
listen to a sweet little voice that came each moment nearer, 
singing the following ditty : 

- “ Up she took her little crook, 

Determined for to find ’em; 

She found ’em indeed — 

But it made her heart grieve, 

For they’d all left their tails a-liind ’em!” 

Berry snatched up the child and hid her face in his 
dimpled neck. 

“ If my child had lived there would have been no room 
in my life for Hugo Holt,” she said, but not so low but 
that Hetty heard her. 


CHAPTER IV. 

“With open eyes (ah, woe is me!) 

Asleep and dreaming fearfully; 

Fearfully dreaming, yet, I wis. 

Dreaming that alone, which is — ” 

It had come to an end at last, and if I had been a Bos- 
well, I should have liked to walk behind these young peo- 
ple and duly chronicle their smart sayings and doings; 
also the many betises and acts of folly they managed to 
perpetrate within the space of five days. 

But there had been no fun so fast and furious as on the 
night that they played hunt-the-slipper, though sly allu- 
sions to it had been made every day, and with special 
reference to the color of Mrs. Booth’s stockings. “It 


25 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

was only because they were white that anybody noticed 
them,” she would declare; “ if they had been black, like 
Christabel’s, no one would have seen them!” 

And now they were all assembled at the open house- 
door, and the last adieus were being spoken. 

“ The happiest Christmas and the most high old time I 
ever spent in my life,” said Jemmy St. Asaph, as he 
bowed over his hostess’s hand. 

“We can never hope to spend such another,” said 
Llewellyn Poore, in his earnest, sincere voice; but he was 
looking at Christabel, who was also looking at him, but 
meditatively, as if she had not quite got to the bottom of 
his blue eyes, but intended to, some day. 

“ Never!” said Berry, as with an April shower of tears 
splashing down her face she kissed Hetty, to whom she 
clung with something more than the mere ordinary regret 
of a short parting. 

And now they are off at last, Chummy, perfect host 
and best of good fellows, taking the reins, and so by de- 
grees they dwindle' down the jwenue and so out of sight. 

When they had quite disappeared, Hetty and Christabel 
went slowly back to the drawing-room — perhaps the most 
beautiful out of all the Ladisloes apartments — and sink- 
ing opposite each other into deep easy-chairs, sighed. 

“ Which are you sighing after?” said Hetty, forgetting 
herself, as usual, in her neighbor’s woes. 

“ Neither. And for whom are you?” 

“ For Berry.” 

“ She will not sigh for herself; in town she has no 
time.” 

“Yet she has snatched a moment in which to fall in 
love,” thought Hetty, but aloud she said, “ The servants 
have got up an absurd rumor again that the ghost is 
abroad. Something was seen last night, and this morn- 
ing they are terrified to walk about, frightened of their 


26 MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

shadows. I am just going to get to the bottom of it,” 
and she rang the bell. 

All the servants at Ladisloes had delightful manners, 
and the woman who now appeared was no exception to 
the rule. 

“ There is some nonsense being talked about a ghost 
appearing last night,” said Mrs. Cholmondely, “who set 
the story afloat?” 

“ I did, ma’am,” said the woman, very respectfully. 

“And what did you see?” inquired Hetty, sharply, “or 
what did you think you saw?” 

“A tall, white figure, ma’am, that stood close against 
the wall beside me — ” 

“ Oh!” cried Hetty, throwing herself back in her chair, 
“it is too ridiculous! How many times have I told you 
that at certain times of the year, when the moon is in a 
particular quarter, a shadow is thrown on the wall — a 
white shadow — that looks exactly like a woman with % her 
arms lifted.” 

“’Yes ma’am,” said the^ servant, respectfully, “and I 
have been now with you some time, and I have seen 
what you describe, and as I knew when to expect it, I 
was never frightened; and when I got up and stood be- 
tween the wall and the window, the figure vanished.” 

“And why did you not get up last night?” said Hetty, 
in an aggrieved voice. 

“ I could not, ma’am, for I knew at once this was some- 
thing — different. I seemed frozen to where I lay, and 
dared not even turn my head; but soon I heard a long, 
heart-breaking sigh, and then a sort of whisper, ‘Where 
shall I hide it — where shall I hide it?’ Then the arms 
were lifted above me as if seeking some hidden place in 
the wall — and then, ma’am, I fainted, but when I came to 
myself, I was alone.” 

“ A practical joke played on you by a fellow-servant,” 
said Hetty, who had gone a little pale; “ but one more 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 27 

such joke played in this house, and the person upon whom 
it is perpetrated — goes.” 

She made a slight gesture of dismissal, and the woman, 
who was also very pale, retired. 

“ Kirsty,” said Hetty, bounding up in her chair as the 
door closed, ‘‘what does it all mean? The woman was 
speaking truth, and there is a secret cupboard just above 
her bed — Berry and I peeped into it only the other day — 
it opens and shuts with a spring.” She paused abruptly, 
struck by a certain thought: “ Could it have been Berry 
— she walks in her sleep, and we had been talking about 
ghosts and the haunted room before we went to bed last 
night — but what should she want to hide there ?” 

(i Nothing,” said Christabel, practically, “ and how 
should she get over to the servants’ quarters? The woman 
had indigestion and dreamed it all.” 

But Hetty did not hear her. She had begun to run, 
and did not stop running till she had reached the haunt- 
ed room, when she jumped upon the bed, and pressed on 
the spring of the almost invisible cupboard door in the 
wall. 

But the cupboard was empty — only cobwebs and the 
dirt of ages clung to the fair arm that she swept again and 
again round its interior. 


CHAPTER V. 

u What sudden chance is this,” quoth she, 

“ That I to love must subject be, 

Which never thereto would agree, 

But still did it defy?” 

“ He is very good-looking,” said Hugo Holt, at his own 
dinner-table, and addressing his left-hand neighbor, who 
was Mrs. Booth. 

“ Too fair,” she said, looking across at her husband, 
i{ but your wife is very handsome,” she added, glancing 


28 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER? 


at the Zenobia-like woman who, at over forty years of age, 
had not a wrinkle on her face, and was, perhaps, the fin- 
est monument possible to Mr. Holt’s uninterrupted sue- 
cess in life. 

Serenely unconscious of rivalry, but fully aware of her 
advantages, which included her house, her diamonds, her 
gayeties, her children, and, last of all, her husband, Mrs. 
Holt looked exactly what she was — a handsome, well- 
meaning, good sort of second-rate woman, likely to do 
her duty fairly well, and enjoy herself thoroughly to the 
end of the chapter. 

Hugo Holt cast a brief glance at his wife. 

“ You should have said, ‘ has been,’ he remarked, “ and 
when you speak of a woman in the past tense, not the 
present, all is over.” 

Something cynical, hard, struck on Berry’s ear un- 
pleasantly. “ You would be better as a lover than hus- 
band,” she thought, “and you loved her enough to marry 
her — and she is the mother of your children; if she is 
stupid, I believe that she is good.” But aloud she said, 
“ I think I should be very proud of those beautiful 
diamonds if my husband had earned them.” 

“ He will be a great man yet,” said Hugo, with a cu- 
rious blending of admiration, envy, and some faint con- 
tempt in the eyes he turned on Mr. Booth; “ but do you 
never wear a necklace?” and he glanced at her throat. 

“Don’t you know,” she said, laughing, “that neck- 
laces have gone out, and necks have come in?” 

He smiled, and she was startled to see how his face 
changed. 

“ In some curious way he suggests one of those apostolic 
figures in a stained-glass window that one gazes at with a 
certain awe,” she had said to her husband when she re- 
turned home, and Mr. Booth had burst out laughing, and 
said he knew no one less of an apostle or monk than Huso 
Holt. 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? ~ 29 

And now that he smiled, the wizard-like spell that he 
had seemed to wield over her vanished, and she felt no 
fear, only happiness, as she sat beside him. 

And suddenly it was borne in upon her what a pity it 
was that she had spoken to Hetty about him — to speak 
such words as might burn and blister any woman’s tongue, 
they were so much more wicked than if even thought, and 
how depraved her mind must gradually have become since 
such thoughts could have entered in! 

All this flashed through her mind as she turned to her 
other neighbor, who had addressed some remark to her on 
the one burning question of the hour — politics. Hugo 
Holt could survey her at his leisure, and he did so with 
the keen, critical taste of a man daily familiar with every 
kind of beauty. 

T think that a woman’s loveliness should be like a cloud, 
or a sunset, ora summer sea, constantly changing and full 
of surprises, so that you are perpetually delighted, yet 
never wholly grasp your delight, but each moment expect 
something more exquisite still — and thus you are always 
kept a little hungry — the state of mind in which a true 
Sybarite enjoys himself the most perfectly. 

And Berry was a surprise to Hugo Holt. Hitherto he 
had seen her only in morning dress, save on the brief oc- 
casion when she had raced him for the slipper at Ladis- 
loes, but to-night he knew that whether she were beau- 
tiful or no in other men’s eyes, she filled his own not only 
to the exclusion of every other woman present, but to 
that of any absent one in the world. 

‘• When are you coming to see me again?” he said 
quietly when she turned back to him. , 

“ My husband and I are not in trouble now,” she said; 
et when we are, I will go to you. And you are always so 
busy — I feel that it is an insult to plague you with a 
mere trifling lawsuit like ours. I wonder if you man- 
aged to see half the people who were sitting outside on 


30 * MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

chairs, dodging round corners, bullying your clerks, and 
all ready to eat me up with rage when I got admitted be- 
fore them?” 

He smiled a little, but said nothing. 

“I don’t know why you let me go in so soon,” she said, 
shaking her bronze head, “ you had never seen me before, 
and — ” 

“You forget that your name is well known,” he said. 

“But that is nothing,” she said, “so many celebrated 
people were there; and handsome as the people are here 
to-night, those at your chambers were handsomer still.” 

It was true. Hardly a woman of note or beauty in 
London had not at some time or other gone to him on 
private and delicate business; and as they all came to him 
in tears, in indignation, or in entreaty (but nearly always 
in beauty), he had the most opportunities of perhaps any 
man iu London for the study of a woman. Did a lovely 
soul in despair swoon on his shoulder in one room, there 
were half a dozen others waiting in adjacent apartments 
ready to treat him to a never-ending crescendo of emotions, 
all of which he observed with the delicate, acute intelli- 
gence that distinguished him, and seemed unmoved by; 
though, if the man of brains stood firm, perchance the 
man of flesh and blood sometimes trembled. 

“I am honored by the confidence of a great many 
ladies,” he said. 

Berry felt a piece of impertinence rising to her lips; she 
. knew it was corning, and had no power to smother it. 

“ Is it — is it,” she said with the most innocent air, “ be- 
cause you know how to flirt so well, that you have suc- 
ceeded sp brilliantly?” 

“You are severe,” he said, with a slight indrawing of 
the lips, “but at least I was not successful in one thing — 
obtaining your slipper.” 

“I will leave it you in my will,” she said as she leaned 
back in her chair, and put both hands behind her back. 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


31 


Whatever charm Mrs. Booth might have, it was crowned 
with the supreme quality of distinction; the quality of re- 
sistance, too, was strong in her nature, or Hugo Holt had 
never studied that branch of a woman’s character yet. 

“No,” he said, “you shall give it me of your own free 
will — and soon.” 

“That will be never,” she said, as quietly as he. 

“You may change,” he said. 

“And you may improve.” 

“Yes. But I should like to improve your knowledge 
in some respects.” 

“You are welcome to try. Do you usually succeed?” 

He did not answer her. 

“ You have no time. What can a man do who has no 
time?” 

“He can make some.” 

Now was her turn for silence, and she used it in forcing 
herself to look at the decorations of the table, and to won- 
der absently if the gold plate were to please his wife’s taste, 
and the white flowers his own. 

Many well-known faces bordered those flowers — proba- 
bly no one unpossessed of some special intellectual gift, 
or unadorned by some brilliant laurel-leaf of success, was 
present, and, instead of feeling proud to be in such com- 
pany, Beryl suddenly asked herself why she was there. 
Because he coveted a sight of her, or because she was 
famous? She had come eagerly to-night, for she wanted 
an insight into his home life, into his character, of which 
she knew nothing but by hearsay. She knew only that 
he had violently attracted her, and she was difficult of at- 
traction. 

“I shall call to-morrow afternoon,” he said, “between 
four and five.” 

“You will not be able to leave Lely Place,” she said, 
paling in spite of herself, “and — I shall not be at home.” 

“ I can wait.” 


32 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


“ And half London will be at the door waiting for — 
you.” 

“They can wait, too,” he said, as he skinned a peach 
for her dessert. “ So you have been married eight years, 
and yet you do not flirt?” 

“Nine. I never felt the slightest inclination.” 

“And when you do?” 

’ “ I will tell yon.” 

“ I shall hold you to your promise,” he said, in his 
quiet voice, that was one of the secrets of his power. He 
was so still always, and his fame spoke for him so loud! 
His very impassibility, as opposed to his swiftness of eye 
and speech, arrested you. In the somewhat worn face 
there was always something intense, and the presence of 
the sword in the scabbard was never for an instant forgot- 
ten. 

Their eyes met, and into the gray and the brown the 
same indomitable spirit seemed to leap and flash defiance 
at its own reflection, and the woman drew in her breath 
sharply, and the man’s mouth set itself into a hard line. 

“So it is to be a duel a mort ,” he thought, as she 
dragged her eyes away from his; but he saw that she had 
grown white as the bosom that was fluttering beneath her 
lace like a terrified bird, and he knew that for all her care- 
lessness his influence over her was established. His expe- 
rience of women was infinite, add this woman, if of a rare 
order than most, was not much less difficult to undreamt 
than the rest.. 

He had seen at once that she was not one of those 
women who carry on an intrigue as lightly as she wears a 
rose in her waist-belt, and changes the one as often as the 
other; that, with her, a lover would not come in as a mere 
part of the appanage of her existence, to call on her upot 
a certain day, to be met at a certain place, then dismissed 
from her mind until she saw him next — forgotten in the 
whirl of her worldly existence. This woman was differ- 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 33 

eii t — she was capable of a grand passion, and for one man 
only. 

He would see her to-morrow — alone, and a tete-a-tete 
he had meant to arrange upstairs presently need not be 
carried out. 

Then he devoted himself to a few moments’ conversa- 
tion with his neglected right-hand neighbor, but found 
himself listening intently for Berry’s voice. 

“ Are you doing anything now?” he heard the man next 
to her say. 

“1 am eating a peach.” 

“ Ah! but I meant, are you painting anything now?” 

“ I never paint.” 

Hugo Holt laughed, and Berry looked round quickly. 
<f Oh!” she said to him, “ 1 meant to thank you. You 
are the first person who has taken me in to dinner for 
nearly ten years who has not said to me, ‘ What are you 
doing now?’” 

“ But you do, you know,” said his imperturbable neigh- 
bor;. “ By the way, of course, you’ve seen ‘Shocking!’ 
Whenever I meditate prussic acid, I look at ‘ Shocking!’ 
and’ recover.” 

“ But is not Mr. B quite as shocking, too, and more 

am using?’!! broke in Lady Zoe, who was sitting next but 
one to Berry. 

'u“He does not amuse the policemen who are his body- 
gum*uvA. One of them said the other day that he didn’t 
mind waiting for him half the night outside all sorts of 
places, but what he did object to was attending hitn to 
early communion next morning.” 

“I mean to ask him to come and see me,” said Lady 
Zoe, “and then I shall kill him, and earn a place in 
Paradise.” 

r “ Oh, no! you will only fall in love with him,” said 
the man’s soft sl.ow voice, “ and of course he will fall in 

love with von. And then he will give you a Bible; he 
2 


34 MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

keeps a stock as inexhaustible as his amours , and every- 
thing will be quite en regie 
• Lady Zoe shook her head. 

“ He is growing respectable,” she said, “and actually 
taking care of appearances. Last night I sat opposite 
him at dinner. He was between two lovely women, and 
so transported by their charms that he eat nothing, but 
gloated upon them alternately. Then suddenly he would 
recollect himself, his back shot up, his jaw dropped, his 
features assumed an appearance of rigid virtue, and he 
looked straight before him with the eyes of a fish.” 

“Lord Palmerston should not have been so hard upon 
him when he said, i That young man will die in a mad- 
house or ruin his country,’” said another woman’s voice, 
that had a soft, chiding ring in it; “ their weaknesses 
were so very similar that each might say, ‘ Nous sommes 
lies par nos coquins /’ ” 

But this smart remark was lost on Berry, who had 
turned to discover a charming little figure that had stolen 
in between her host and herself, and who sat with one 
slender hand clasped over her father’s, while she looked 
up at him with the most utter satisfaction and love. 

Berry thought she had got the glimpses into his home 
life and character that she desired, as she stooped down, 
and kissed the child’s soft brown cheek. 


CHAPTER YI. 

“ Detain me not! a dim power drives me hence, 

And that will be my guide.” 

Mrs. Booth was standing before a looking-glass let 
into a recess in the wall that reflected not only herself, 
but the bank of flowers at its foot. 

Her hands were behind her back, and her eyes were 
traveling upward and round a frame of ebony, shaped 
something like a church door, and with brackets upon 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


35 


which some beautiful specimens of china rested. A 
wreath of flowers painted on gold made the inner setting 
of the glass, that in turn gave back a fire-place veiled 
in bronze-green plush, with Spring, Summer, Autumn, 
and Winter dancing above in Dresden, and a few pictures 
and a pair of priceless cloisonne jars above. Berry sighed 
impatiently, then went to one of the windows and looked 
out. 

It was only three o’clock, but the February afternoon 
was drawing sharply to a close. In Brook Street the 
place was strangely quiet, and Berry sighed again as she 
looked out. Then she dropped the curtain, moved 
slowly, passed beneath the plush hangings into the second 
room, and sat down for a moment at the piano, where 
the mirror behind it again gave back her face and the 
china on the wall behind her. 

It struck her suddenly that she had too much china, 
and far too many mirrors. She remembered that in the 
house of the most beautiful woman of her age you will 
find no mirror, save the silver-framed one in her bedroom; 
though glasses enough she finds, I wot, in the eyes of her 
worshipers! 

Berry started up, and disappeared into the last, the 
longest room of the three, that ended unexpectedly, and 
round a corner, in a fourth, just large enough to contain 
a settee, a window, a book-shelf, some pictures — and no 
door. 

The settee had been variously occupied by celebrated 
couples in its turn, and was invariably called “Mrs. 
Booth’s spooning corner,” though in point of fact she had 
never occupied it either singly, or in company in her life. 

But now she took her seat there, looking at “ Lorna 
Doone,” who, with a lamp suspended over her head, and 
all her pure beauty visible in profile, showed like snow 
from the background of velvet against which she was 
placed. 


36 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


But a restless demon seemed to possess Berry that af- 
ternoon, and she was just starting up again when faint 
footsteps in the distance swiftly approached her, and she 
turned almost as white as the gentle Lorna herself. 

“ It is only three o’clock,” she said, in an odd whisper, 
then she went forward, and was face to face with Llewel- 
lyn Poore. 

“How do you do?” she cried. “ Oh, how glad I am 
to see you!” and the young man colored a little with 
pleasure and surprise at her reception of his first visit, 

“ Come and get warm,” she said, leading the way to 
the other rooms where wood fires blazed cheerfully; but 
he asked to be allowed to linger and look at some of the 
beautiful things with which Mrs. Booth had enriched her 
home; and she showed them all to him with the pride of 
a shop-woman who not only sells, but makes her wares. 

“ But I didn’t make the carpets or the curtains,” she 
said, looking down at the faint neutral tints at his feet, 
then up at the gold and silver threads worked into the 
precious stuff that veiled her windows; “though I hung 
up the pictures, and I covered the frames for my china, 
and I sewed the satin on the chairs and the velvet on the 
little tables — and I do the flowers myself, every morn- 
ing.” 

“And they are better than all,” said Llewellyn Poore — 
“ better even than your taste!” He had not meant to say 
it, but some instinct told him that above all the artificial 
beauty, the luxury Of her surroundings, the natural love- 
liness of life was paramount in her mind. 

“ Yes,” she said, “ I think that is my only dread of 
poverty — that I could not afford to buy flowers. And how 
are they all at Ladisloes?” she said, as she stirred the fire 
into a blaze. 

“ I have not seen Mrs. Cholmondely since you and I 
left Ladisloes. You know it is not much more than a 
week ago.” 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


37 


“ Only a week!” said Berry. “ It seems years since we 
played hunt-the-slipper, and dug in the garden, and medi- 
tated shots with lemons at Coleridge’s plaster nose in the 
hall. What fun we had! But tell me,” she added, 
quickly, “do you mind taking me out for a walk this 
afternoon ?” 

Her request solved a riddle that had been forming in 
his mind. If he knew Mrs. Booth’s inward life very little, 
he knew her outwardly as a woman who dressed perfectly. 
And her tailor-made gray dress, with its linen collar and 
cuffs, had seemed to him out of harmony with the bronze- 
gold tints of her rooms, the voluptuous perfection of color, 
warmth, and scent that enfolded them. 

“I will take you anywhere,” he said, “but do you 
know that it is intensely cold, and that a fog is drawing 
in ?” 

“And I am turning you out,” she said; “but if you 
had not come I should have gone by myself. Here are 
my cloak, and my hat, and my gloves” — and she put on 
the last first, and her hat rather more carefully, then held 
out her cloak to Llewellyn Poore, who helped heron with 
it; and as she drew the red plush together, he thought it 
seemed to close in the sweetness of her face, and a pale- 
ness, too, that was unusual there. Perhaps she felt her- 
self to be a Cinderella in her haste, for outside the draw- 
ing-room door she paused and followed Llewellyn Poore’s 
glance as it traveled up the engravings that lined the 
staircase. 

“ Do you care for them?” she said. “ There are some 
better the next landing, but only my boudoir and work- 
room are there. My husband’s workshop is down-stairs,” 
and they went together into a square room on the ground 
floor, paneled to the ceiling with books in half a dozen 
languages. “And they are all learned,” she said, with 
pride in the wave of her little hand, “and he is writing a 
better book than any one of them.” 


38 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


She stooped over a table littered all over with papers 
and notes, iu the midst of which were some foolscap sheets, 
freshly written, and upon which the ink was scarcely dry, 
and involuntarily Llewellyn Poore thought of Carlyle and 
his wife — when Jean was young and Carlyle only at early 
middle-age. 

“ Of course he has not time to come out with me,” she 
said, a little proudly, as if she read his thoughts, “but is 
not that four o’clock striking?”- And she ran out of the 
room as if for her life. 

“ No; it is half past three,” he said, as her restless hand 
drew the hall door to behind them, and the last stroke 
sounded from St. George’s hard by. 

“ Where shall we go?” she said, gayly, as they stood in 
the street together. “ To the Park?” 

“ I am afraid that rather a bad fog is drawing in,” said 
the young man, who was indeed regretting the warmth 
and fragrance of the house they had just quitted. 

“Are you afraid that we shall be lost in it?” she said. 
“ Well, I almost wish we might be, for I don’t want to go 
home until seven o’clock to-night!” 

He looked at her in astonishment. 

“ Do you often walk out as late as that?” he said. 

“ No. And, will you believe it, you are the only young 
man I have ever walked out with since I married?” 

“ Then I am even happier than I supposed,” he said, 
in the earnest way that, together with something uncom- 
mon in his face, made him rather out of the way and re- 
markable. 

Berry looked at him eagerly, wistfully. Had any one 
told her, two hours ago, that she would be placing this 
resolute-eyed young man as a bulwark between her heart 
and danger, she would have laughed; but now an odd 
sense of safety came to her, and her spirits rose. 

“ There goes England’s enemy!” she exclaimed, as they 
crossed Berkeley Square. 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


39 


“Where?” said Llewellyn Poore, looking round. 

“There!” she pointed toward a gay old man with a 
flower in his button-hole, who was skipping along beside 
a blooming young girl, who ought to have been, if she 
wasn’t, his great-granddaughter. 

Millions of money, oceans of England’s bravest and 
noblest blood had been squandered by that withered hand. 
England’s very honor had been cast down into the bottom- 
less abyss of his reckless mistakes. Yet, he but squandered 
and flung away all the more royally, for none of the riches 
were drawn from himself, but the nation. 

“Doesn’t it make you choke to think of all our brave 
fellows marching out to the tune of * Auld Lang Syne,’ 
sent to certain death by the man whom Carlyle describes 
as ‘ one of the most contemptible men he ever looked 
on ’?” cried Berry, as the great man and his charmer dis- 
appeared round a corner. 

“ Don’t ask me to abuse him,” said Mr. Poore; “ I know 
some of his family, and they are charming.” 

“Then get them to persuade him to resign,” cried 
Berry, indignantly, “ while still we have a rag of honor 
with which to cover us as Englishmen. He ought to be 
made to resign. What right has a dotard of seventy in 
office? Of course he can talk: but his long practice makes 
words come to him us easy as writing or painting, when 
one has the knack. And this old man has lost self-con- 
trol in every way. Which foreign paper was it that de- 
scribed our House of Commons as a disorderly establish- 
ment, ruled over by an old gentleman of uncontrollable 
temper?” 

“ I had no idea that you were a politician,” said Mr. 
Poore, when she paused, out of breath. 

“ Oh! I have lots more to say— -but it would be wasted 
upon you. So you are a Radical! Well, I have known 
gentlemen who were Radicals, but never a Radical who 
was a gentleman.” 


40 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


“ You frighten me,” said the young man, laughing. 
“ Why did you not give me some hint of your views at 
Ladisloes? then I should never have found courage to call 
upon you to-day.” 

“ But I am very glad that you did. Do you think our 
men will be in time to save Gordon? I seem to see him 
always with those eagle eyes so full of light, looking out 
night and day for succor — and the man who might have 
sent it, dancing, pirouetting, amusing himself at home, 
but slowly and surely dethroning himself in the hearts of 
a people who are slow to give up what they have once 
sworn by and established. And when our men get to 
Khartoum, instead of the shouts of victory, there will be 
silence — the silence of the grave.” 

“ You take things too seriously,” said Mr. Poore, struck 
by something unusual, intense in her face; “ I think your 
nerves are unstrung; perhaps you have been working too 
hard lately.” 

“ Working?” she said. “Oh! I never work. I dash 
down scraps, thoughts, ideas, but I do not work. But 
there has been a strain on my mind during the last few 
months. Did you not know that Mr. Booth has a lawsuit 
coming on, and if he loses it, we are almost beggars?” 

“ I did not know it,” said the young man, shocked, and 
throwing a backward thought to the perfect little house 
they had just left; “but you have a good chance of win- 
ning it?” 

“ I think not. When I went to ask Mr. Holt, as an 
expert, his opinion, he did not take a favorable view of 
the case.” 

“ And why did not your husband go?” said Llewellyn, 
rather brusquely. 

“ He was busy with his book. Whatever business has 
to be attended to, his solicitor and I do it between us. 
But women were not meant for business,” she added, 
shaking her head; “ they always make a muddle of it.” 


JiURDEIi OR MANSLAUGHTER? 41 

“ Have you seen Mr. Holt since you came back?” said 
the young man, rather averting his eyes from, than look- 
ing at, her. 

“ We dined at his house last night. Are you one of his 
enemies?” she said, looking at him steadily. 

“Not if you are his friend,” he said, with more in his 
voice than he had intended to convey. 

“ I know him so slightly,” she said, “ at most I have met 
him half a dozen times.” 

They had reached the park now, and were pacing be- 
neath the leafless boughs, too preoccupied to notice the 
spectral mists that were gradually closing round them into 
one dense, opaque mass. An odd feeling of exultation 
gradually took possession of Berry, and some of the wild 
spirits she had shown at Ladisloes once more moved her. 
You could not have found a more outwardly happy pair 
than the two who went swinging along with so quick a 
step, and with such fresh roses in their cheeks that many 
persons turned to looked with admiration after them as they 
passed. But outside Knightsbridge Barracks they found 
themselves suddenly inclosed in the fog’s embrace, and 
they could hardly see the faces they turned upon each 
other. 

“We must go back,” said Berry, “but we need not 
hurry. If we walk close beside the railings, it is impos- 
sible for us to lose our way. It will take us a good long 
time to get home?” she added, with a curious anxiety in 
her voice. 

“Perhaps longer than you will like,” he said, more 
puzzled by her than ever. 

So, in single file, they went along the way they had 
come, each with a hand on the railings, the muffled roll 
of invisible wheels close at their side, and their conversa- 
tion flagging a little with the necessity of raising their 
voices to each other. At Hyde Park Corner they were 
piloted across by a friendly policeman, and then Llewellyn 


4 2 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


Poore breathed freely, and Berry sighed, as they moved 
forward, her hand still in his. At that moment the fog 
lifted, and showed, a pace or two away, Hugo Holt. 

She thought there was something stern, menacing even, 
in his pale face, as he pulled off his hat low to her, his 
eyes fixed all the while on Llewellyn Poore. 

Her step had not slackened as she approached him; 
neither did his as he passed her. A moment, and the fog 
had again swallowed up all, but not before Llewellyn had 
seen the brilliant color that had flushed into Mrs. Booth’s 
face. 

“Let us make haste,” she cried, as anxious now to 
reach her home as just now she had been to quit it. 
“Surely a horse’s legs would carry us as safely as our 
own?” 

“No,” he said, “ they would not be so safe. And I 
should like to see you inside your own door before I leave 
you.” 

“'It is all the same,” she said, listlessly; and so, with 
all her bright spirits gone, they made their slow pilgrim- 
age to Brook Street, and St. George’s was striking six 
when Llewellyn Poore groped his way to the bell and 
pulled it. 

Apparently the house was on the lookout for its errant 
mistress, for the door instantly flew open, and from the 
distance Mr. Booth approached, rubbing his hands in 
anxiety, but dismissing her from his mind the moment he 
had found her. He shook hands with Llewellyn Poore, 
then retreated to his study — happy. 

“ Won’t you come up and have some tea?” she said, but 
the young man excused himself. 

“ It was then that the man-servant said, “ Mr. Hugo 
Holt called, ma’am, about half an hour ago. He said that 
you expected him, but I told him that you were out walk- 
ing with Mr. Llewellyn Poore.” 

“ Did he ask if I had waited in for him?” said Berry. 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 43 

“ Yes, ma’am, but I told him you had gone out at half 
past three.” 

“Come and see me again, soon,” she said, turning to 
Llewellyn Poore, “ and tell me all about your new briefs 
— and some more droll stories about the judges! And 
come soon,” she added, with a warmth that astonished the 
discreet butler almost as much as his young mistress’s 
other vagaries that afternoon. 

“I will,” said the young man, with equal warmth, and 
went away, trying to unriddle the woman he had just 
left. 

That night, as Mrs. Booth stood unlacing her white 
velvet gown in the dim green light of her boudoir, she 
laughed in the looking-glass at her own reflection, which 
she found delightful, and as her dress slipped in heavy 
folds to her knees she thought of Millais’ picture, St. 
Agnes Eve. “But I am not afraid of him,” she said 
aloud and triumphantly; “ though I did run away from 
him, I am not in the least afraid!” 

As she lifted her arms above her head, it occurred to 
her how much more lovely are a woman’s shoulder and* 
upper arm than the elbow and wrist that her ordinary' 
dress displays. For awhile she stood looking with all the 
keen delight of an artist at the satin reflets , the divine 
softness of her skin, and half-unconsciously she moved 
from one attitude to another, until she felt a slight stir 
in the room, and looking in the glass she saw the face of 
her husband just behind her. 

“ What are you doing?” he said, puzzled by her unusual 
fit of vanity. 

“Nothing!” she said, as without turning, she drew his 
head down to hers; but to her heart she said, “lam play- 
ing the wanton!” 


44 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


CHAPTER VII. 

Tout lasse, tout passe, tout casse. 

It was Primrose Day, and every street, every nook and 
corner of a vast city bore witness to how sweet was the 
smell in men’s nostrils of a great man’s memory. 

Great ladies had piled them in huge banks upon their 
balconies, every window furnished its contingent, and 
every mondaine, milliner, masher, workman, and child 
that you met, wore a cluster of the pale flower that the 
greatest politician of our time had chosen for his em- 
blem. 

Little did he think, when he chose it, what a weapon 
this frail flower would be with which to strike in the face 
his enemies! Silent, but how the primrose speaks! How 
the Whigs must feel it as they walk abroad, and see it 
everywhere save on their own breasts! It speaks the pro- 
test of the nation against the policy that would have ruined 
any other country but England, while it recalls with ven- 
eration the deeds of one who was always for his country, 
never for himself, and who finely said, “The first duty of 
a public man is to despise popularity.” Well, he had a 
fair measure of it in life, his share of it is regal now, and 
increases with every year — a nobler testimony to the work 
he has left behind him, than had he been in life-time the 
idol of the people. Brook Street was not behindhand in 
its tribute, but perhaps the smartest balconies in it were 
Mrs. Booth’s; and she looked pretty smart herself as she 
stood in her door way, colloguing with a flower-man who 
wished to sell her a cart-load of flowers for exactly six 
times as much as they had cost him. 

“I will have three white azaleas, and one red one,” 
Berry was saying in a very determined tone, “ two pots of 
lilies, and four hyacinths, and I will give you in exchange ” 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 45 

(she dropped her voice as much as was consistent with 
dignity) “one old coat, two waistcoats, a pair of boots, 
and an old hat — a boxer.” 

“ Couldn’t do it, mum— couldn’t do it noways. The 
pots you want’s worth a pound, and frock-coats, mum, 
isn’t worn by gentlemen in my walk of life, and there’s a 
difficulty in disposing of ’em.” 

“ You can go down in the kitchen and look at them,” 
said Berry, majestically; “or else you can take all these 
things” — and she pointed to the highly ornamented door- 
step — “ away.” 

The man retreated to the area- steps, Berry retired to 
the dining-room, where the butler soon appeared. 

“ He says he can’t give you any more than ten shillings, 
ma’am,” he announced. 

“ Oh, Gregory!” cried Berry, “ it is far too little. There 
were no holes in any of them except the boots!” 

Gregory smiled. Perhaps he sympathized with his 
mistress’s passion for flowers, as much as with Mr. Booth’s 
disinclination to pay for them; and as his master’s old 
clothes were not only three sizes too big for him, but also 
in appearance far below his own point of gentility, he al- 
ways aided and abetted her thievings to the best of his 
power. 

“ I don’t think they’re worth much more, ma’am,” he 
said; “master messes up his things so with chemicals. 
But perhaps we can find a few more old things to put to- 
gether—” 

“Not out of Mr. Booth’s wardrobe, Gregory,” said 
Berry in despair; “ he made such a fuss about that last 
pair of trousers. And have you looked in the pockets of 
the things down-stairs, to make sure there are no pickles 
or bits of bodies in them?” 

“ Quite sure, ma’am.” 

“ There’s that skull, Gregory,” she said, after both 


46 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER? 


had meditated for a few seconds, “done up in a blue bag- 
in the back room. Mr. Booth says it is worth a pound — 
but that would not be nice — each flower would seem to 
me like a Basil-tree,” she added to herself. 

“ Master would And it out, ma’am. But I will see what 
I can do.” And he disappeared down-stairs. 

When Hetty Cholmondely drove up five minutes later,, 
it was to see a donkey-cart standing before the door, upon 
which were piled old coats, breeches, boots, a veteran 
white waistcoat, a lady’s skirt and sundries, the apex of 
the whole being in process of crowning by a particularly 
disreputable old hat. 

“ Oh! you dear girl!” cried Berry, as, the elegant bar- 
row moving on, Hetty in her cab became visible, and in 
another moment or two they were rushing into each 
other’s arms. 

“ I see you are at your old tricks again,” said Hetty y 
nodding after the trophied cart, “ but the house looks 
lovely from outside — and look at me!” and she held her 
chin back to display the enormous bunch of primroses at 
her throat. 

“ You look lovely, too!” said Berry, leading her friend 
upstairs; “but don’t say a word before Ned about the 
flowers; it’s the only thing we ever quarrel about — that 
and tidying up.” 

“ Have you no other cause for quarrel?” said Hetty, 
sinking into the deepest and warmest easy-chair like the 
luxury-loving little creature that she was, and looking at 
Berry, who looked even more chic than usual in her se- 
verely plain white serge gown. 

“None!” said Berry; “you know — you know” — she 
turned a waggish eye upon her friend — “ I never flirted!” 

“ Which means,” said Hetty, “ that your fancy for 
Hugo Holt has died out.” 

“ Which means,” said Berry with vigor, “ that I feel 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 47 

more than ever, that I do not care about the meanness, 
the vulgarity, the self-degradation of an unlawful flirta- 
tion.” 

“ Has there been one?” said Hetty dryly. 

“No; but do you think a man can read in a woman’s 
face all that she has thought and said about him? I be- 
lieve that Hugo Holt reads me like a book — there is the 
degradation.” 

“ But where are the meanness, the vulgarity?” 

“ Listen. Last night I went to the A ’s. Ned was 

busy, and couldn’t or wouldn’t come, and he was there with 
Zenobia. He hardly spoke to me; this is what is so mean, 
so vulgar — that a man will try and make love to you be- 
hind his wife’s back, and before her face practically ig- 
nore you.” 

“ He doesn’t look like a man to be afraid of anything,” 
said Hetty. “ But what did you do?” 

“ Yawned — fanned myself — prayed for some one to flirt 
with — and Providence sent somebody. I took care that the 
man did not leave me for a second during the quarter of 
an hour I remained in the house. As I was going down- 
stairs 1 passed Mr. Holt. He said something — I forget 
what. I said, ‘ Yes, I am going now,’ and passed on. 
Mr. Trent waited while my cloak was put on, and when 
I came out I met Mr. Holt. ‘ Are you really going so 
soon?’ he said; his voice was angry, though his face was 
as quiet as ever. ‘ Yes,’ I said, ‘ 1 am not used to going 
out alone, and I am wretched without my husband.’ 

You might do without him for a little while,’ he said, 
and then I took Mr. Trent’s arm and went out to the 
carriage. I believe he thought I was going to take Mr. 
Trent with me — that is the worst of a man having a single 
bad thought of you; he always suspects you of being 
worse with, somebody else than you are with him.” 

There was intense bitterness in Berry’s voice, and she 
stamped her foot with anger as she ceased speaking; she 


48 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


had been so high above all these things, and she felt her- 
self sunk so low. 

“ What had you got on?” said Hetty, asking the ques- 
tion that every woman has asked another at some period 
or other of her life. 

“Nothing!” said Berry, absently; “I mean, nothing 
particular; but I suppose it was all right, for the women 
stared at me more than usual.” 

“ I know how you can look,” said Hetty nodding* 
“And how often have you seen him since you came 
back?” 

“Once at his house, and once last night.” 

“ Only that! My dear, you are a fortunate woman. His 
fancy has died out as quickly as yours. If he were in love 
with } 7 ou, he would not have rested till he had managed 
to see you again.” 

“ He has not time to remember me. Besides, he did 
try — once. He called here and I was — out.” 

“ Did you know he was coming?” 

“Yes!” 

“ H’m! Did he call again?” 

“No, and never will. That is always a woman’s fate; 
if she is good she is forgotten. If one could only lose a 
lover and gain a friend, how happy one might be!” 

“An ugly woman might— a beautiful one never,” said 
Hetty; “ her every charm lights against the barrier of 
friendship, and there are few men strong and cold enough 
to sit by her side, and shut their eyes.” 

“ But he is very strong, and very cold too,” objected 
Berry, “and I am sure he could do it if he tried. And 
I want to see him sometimes — to be with him.” 

There was a passionate longing in her voice that smote 
painfully on Hetty’s ear; she half raised herself in her 
chair and said: 

“ But if so, why did not you stay a little while in his 
company last night?” 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


49 


“Why? Oh! Hetty, do you think that when I saw 
him I felt like that? I only felt ashamed and proud, and 
that it would be easy to treat him worse than any other 
man of my acquaintance.” 

“ That is safer,” said Hetty, “ than if you were in love 
with him when you saw him, and out of love when you 
are alone. Take my advice; see him as often as you pos- 
sibly can; get thoroughly disenchanted with him — natu- 
rally, he will do the same with you, and you will live to 
laugh as heartily at yourself as at any other love-struck 
dame of your acquaintance.” 

“ He would never let a woman be disenchanted of him,” 
said Berry. 

“Oh! my dear,” cried Hetty, “to think that you 
should bring all this freshness of feeling to what is as old 
as the hills! Every man covets his neighbor’s wife, but 
let him get her for a week, and he will be thankful to 
have back his own! And another woman’s husband would 
be just as aggravating as the one you have now, if fate 
should ever turn him into your spouse.” 

Berry nodded. She knew it all long ago — the perpetual 
tergiversation of love; for she had not lived her life and 
lived in her world for nothing. 

“ I was hearing some odd talk yesterday at the W ’s,” 

she said; “they were arguing that nothing is wrong if it 
is done artistically; that, having only one life, you must 
enjoy and get the very most and the very best out of it; 
you must contribute something to the sum of exquisite 
happiness in the world, and that you can do by contribut- 
ing all that is best in yourself.” 

“ What absurd jargon!” cried Hetty, indignantly; “I 
should like to set each one of them down to three hours’ 
hard reading at his Bible — and do you listen to them. 
Berry?” 

“By their fruits shall } 7 e know them,” she said; “I 
mean, me — and if I don’t profess much, Hetty, why, then 


50 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


I shall forswear myself all the less. And how is Loony ?” 
she added, with a complete change of of manner. 

“ Oh! quite well. He is coming to fetch me by and by. 
And how’s Moony?” 

“Rather more scientific than usual — but I want you to 
look at him carefully. I have an idea that he is ill.” 

“ Don’t look so pale, dear!” cried Hetty, jumping up 
and kissing her; “you know he never did look overstrong, 
and those fair men always look so much worse than they 
really are. And have you seen Spoony? J have got 
some news for him! That little jade Christabel is going 
to be married to an impossibly charming man out in China, 
and to whom she has been engaged these two years.” 

Berry laughed. 

“It was very smart of her to be so quiet over it, and get 
all the fun she could out of her life,” she said; “but, dear 
me, when I used to be engaged, I used to tell everybody! 
It was rather awkward, because I got engaged so often. 
They all had such pretty names, and yet I ended up with, 
a Booth!” 

“ Were you in love with him?” said Hetty, curiously. 

“ Of course, I was engaged to somebody else when I 
saw him first. Oh! there’s the luncheon-bell! Aren’t 
you hungry? I am.” 

“ I didn’t know people in love were ever hungry.” 

“ Then I am not in love.” 

“ How lovely your rooms are, Berry! I never see a 
house I like so well as yours.” 

“ It is not to be named in the same day as Ladisloes.” 

“ But that is country, and this is town,” said Hetty, as 
they went down-stairs together. 

“ I expect that before long we shall occupy a much larger 
and more airy one,” said Berry, in a whisper. 

“ You extravagant soul! You are going to move ?” 

“Very likely. To the work-house.” 

They both burst out laughing, and their voices brought 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


51 


Mr. Booth out of his sanctum. At luncheon Hetty 
studied him more than once, and thought that he looked 
ill. Could he be jealous? She brought in Mr. Holt’s 
name unexpectedly, but without producing any unusual 
signs of interest in him, and his manner to Berry was as 
absently tender as usual. 

And when the two young women flitted gayly off an 
hour later to pay calls, they did not know that it was the 
very last time they would cross that threshold together, nor 
dreamed of when, and under what circumstances, would 
be their next meeting. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

“Alas!” said she, “ we ne’er can be 
Made happy by compulsion ! ” 

It was six o’clock in the morning on the first of April, 
and Mrs. Booth was engaged in the elegant occupation 
of making an April Fool of her husband. 

She had done so for eight years with uninterrupted suc- 
cess, to her own satisfaction, and the secret pleasure of 
Edgar Booth, who delighted in his wife’s frolicsome spirit 
more than she was at all aware of. 

Preoccupied as he was, he loved her, and her only in 
the whole world. To him she was always 

“ A little child, a limber elf, 

Singing, dancing to itself; 

A fairy thing, with red, round cheeks, 

That always finds and never seeks;” 

and even when she “ tidied up” his table — the most un- 
forgivable sin in his decalogue — he forgave her. 

No doubt his scientific pursuits took a more somber 
pleasure, as contrasted with the bright spirit that frolicked 
around them, and often he would sit with his door open. 


52 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


that he might hear her snatches of song above-stairs, or 
her light footstep as she rushed down to the kitchen on 
some flying impulse to the cook, while occasionally a curly 
head would slide round the angle of the door, and a kiss 
be dropped on his slightly bald forehead; then he would 
be alone again, but happy in the sense that she was near. 

If he ever thought of the child whose image she bore 
about with her as jealously as an Indian woman will carry 
for years the body of her dead, child, it was only to dis- 
miss him from his mind. She was so light-hearted, so 
happy — he wanted nothing but herself, and she was con- 
tent with him. 

Was she? Did he know how tiny feet forever pattered 
beside her — 

“Upstairs, down-stairs, in my lady’s chamber” — 

how with every year she seemed to see the growth of the 
child that she had lost so soon after her own life had been 
almost sacrificed to his? 

“Wake up! wake up !” she was crying on this partic- 
ular first of April, while she accentuated her cries with a 
good sound shaking. 

“ What is it?” cried Mr. Booth, starting up and looking 
just as startled and woe-begone a man as he who drew 
Priam’s curtain in the dead of night. 

“What is it?” cried Berry, “why, look at yourself!” 
and she fixed her eyes in horror on the top of his head. 

Out shot Mr. Booth to the looking-glass. 

“Where?” he cried, ducking his head to the altitude 
of Berry’s mirror. 

“ Why, further back, you old donkey! Take my hand- 
glass if you can’t see it!” 

Mr. Booth took the hand-glass, and after exhaustively 
examining his crown, turned round to take a back view 
of it, working up gradually to his forehead. 

“April Fool!” cried Berry, in ecstasies of joy, as Mr. 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


53 


Booth, with certainly every air of looking his part, re- 
treated to his couch. 

But there was not the usual look of rather shamefaced 
•enjoyment on his face that she was used to beholding 
there on such occasions, and the pillow that she had armed 
herself with in case of reprisals, slipped from her slack- 
ened hold as she sat down at a little distance, and 
looked at him. 

“Was it not a good joke?” she said, adding, rather 
anxiously, “ Are you worried, Ned? Did you get any 
news about the lawsuit last night?” 

“If you will bring me my clothes,” he said, “I will 
tell you.” 

Berry ran to the dressing-room and fetched them. 
They were heavy, for it was Mr. Booth’s habit to carry all 
his correspondence in his trousers’ pockets, all his light 
literature and love letters (if any) in his breast ones, and 
a small library of solid books in his coat-tails. Nor 
house-maid nor man-servant was suffered to lay a finger on 
those sacred vestments; the only brushing they ever got 
was from Berry’s hand, when they were on his back; and 
when the excess of luggage they contained wore out the 
cloth and silk, compelling him to change them, he effected 
the removal of his treasures from pocket to pocket with 
the greatest reluctance and disgust. 

Now, with the practiced skill of the sloven, he fished 
out of an immense mass of letters one that he handed to 
Berry, giving her a kiss at the same time, like a mother 
who offers sweets and powder with the same hand. 

“ You must go and see Hugo Holt about it,” he said, 
“ and ask him if lie will undertake the case. Sawter is mud- 
dling it, but the people haven’t got a leg to stand on; so 
how they can have any chance I don’t know. And now, 
my dear, I’m going to have forty winks.” And rolling 
himself in the sheets, he swathed himself round like an 
Egyptian mummy, and composed himself for slumber. 


54 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


Berry thought that he looked as if he were in his shroud, 
with only the long, sharp outline of one arm visible. In- 
voluntarily there recurred to her that grewsome tale where 
a dead man is “watched” by one lonely watcher. Sud- 
denly the dead man’s arm slips out from beneath its cere- 
cloth; it creeps on, and on, and on to a dozen times its 
length, till it grips the watcher and holds her, and it is a 
mud-woman who is found in her chair next morning, 
while the dead man lies peacefully as before. 

For some time Berry sat with her eyes fixed on that 
shrouded figure, forcing herself to think of everything but 
Hugo Holt, and with the unopened letter still in her hand? 
then, when she saw that he was asleep, she came to his 
side and stood looking down upon him. 

“How ill he looks!” she said to herself as she marked 
the blue hollows of the temples, the black shadows be- 
neath the eyes, and the waxen pallor of her husband’s 
face. He had always been pale; the late hours that he 
kept at night, the sedentary habits that kept him at his 
table the greater part of the day, did not encourage bright 
color, but this morning some almost intangible change in 
him struck her, and made a terror in the heart that she 
felt to be guilty toward him. 

“Oh! Ned! Ned!” she whispered below her breath, 
“are you going away? do you want to leave me?” But 
only a fainter breathing, a paler shade upon his haggard 
face, seemed to answer her as she gazed, and all the slow- 
growing anger of years against him was forgotten. She 
remembered that on one occasion, at least, he had shown 
as much determination of character as Hugo Holt could 
have done, and that was when he had fallen in love with 
her. 

There is a story told of Nelson that when some sailors 
were discussing his chances of Heaven, one of the men 
exclaimed: 

“ Bless you, he wouldn’t wait to be asked, he’d walk 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


55 


slap in!” and it was with something of this vigor of at- 
tack that Mr. Bootli had carried by assault Berry’s heart. 
He so fell in love with her, astounded her, and pursued her, 
giving up all his most cherished pursuits to make sure of 
her, that she was fairly swept off her feet, and married 
him, convinced that she had got the most ardent and de- 
voted lover in the world. 

That he was fifteen years older than herself she knew, 
also that he was only moderately rich; but when she found 
that all his pursuits were solitary, and that in him she 
could never find the companionship that is the most 
priceless gift a man can give a woman, her heart went a 
little cold, and the first little rift within the lute made 
itself visible. A true woman would rather live in a garret 
with a man who shares her thoughts and life, than in a 
palace with one who lives his life out beside her, but with 
which hers is never suffered to mingle. Husbands, give 
your wives, when you are able, your company and your 
time; try and enter into their thoughts, their troubles, 
and a sweeter bond of mutual dependence and sympathy 
will be established between you, and one that will give you 
more joy, than the hottest blaze of passion you have ever 
known. Have you ever noticed the many couples one sees 
abroad after business hours in the streets and parks — so 
quiet, so gray, so contented? I like to see them, for they 
have grown old and gray and contented together. But 
when yon see a youngish blooming face (whether of man 
or worpan) beside a jaded one, be sure that the one has 
not shared life with the other, that he has kept the pleas- 
ure and given her the toil, and that there had never been 
true sympathy of heart between them. 

For the rest, I don’t think Mr. Booth made himself 
more actively odious than most husbands — in some re- 
spects he was their superior. He did not beat his wife, 
after the manner of the lower orders, when she was saucy, 
or flirt with the maids as if he belonged to the upper 


56 MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

classes; and if he grumbled sometimes at. bills, he dis- 
bursed cheerfully anything he had in his pocket, then re- 
turned serenely to his meditations. If you did not mind 
waiting five minutes for an answer, you might possibly get 
one, always intelligent, and all the riper, no doubt, for 
being kept so long in his mind. Sometimes, indeed, his 
replies showed unexpected originality, as when, for in- 
stance, he was asked one day how many children a Mr. Z. 
had to which he answered, “Two, and he’s expecting a 
boy.” Then, detecting some astonishment on the face of 
his querist, he added, “Ah! I mean he wants a boy.” 

On another occasion he scandalized a devout relative by 
alluding to Ash Wednesday as a general holiday. In 
clothing, I don’t think he showed more disregard to the 
bagginess of his trousers, and the shapelessness of his coats 
than is becoming in a truly scientific man, and naturally 
it was convenient for study abroad to find almost every 
book he wanted in his pocket. In society, when he chose 
to wake up, he was charming; and among men he was 
very popular, though, being strictly ungregarious in his 
instincts, and quite happy at home, he never made any in- 
timate friends, and never went out unless coaxed thereto 
by Berry. 

“You should have married some frump,” she said to 
him one da}' — “a dummy to mend your shirts, sit by your 
fireside — ” 

“But I never fancied dummies,” he said; “if you had 
not been what you are, I should not have married you.” 

“Somebody to wash and dress you every morning, 
wheel you out in a perambulator to where you want to go 
— and come with it to fetch you home in good rime!” 
Berry concluded, out of patience and breath. “But do 
you think I am so very pretty, Ned?” 

“ Of course I do. 1 never see any woman worth your 
little finger, or half as well turned out, or such good form. 
Trust Edgar Booth for being a judge of looks.” 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


57 


Berry laughed as she shook her head. 

“I should be much more beautiful and interesting to 
you if I developed some new and curious disease,” she 
said; and he would reply that he wished for no alteration 
in her but one — and that lay in her temper. 

“ She must not argue with him — once for all.” 

“ That is just the fault I complain of in you,” Berry 
said, “for of course you can't argue — men never can. 
Though I would rather you argued with me, than sat and 
played chess all the evening! Now I have made up my 
mind to be most 'particular as to whom I marry next time 
— and in the first place he sha’n’t play chess.” 

“ He might do worse,” said Mr. Booth. 

“ Well — one of these days you will see the end of it. I 
shall fall in love deeply — despairingly — and it will be all 
your fault!” 

“Fin not afraid,” Mr. Booth would say, with his eyes 
on the chessmen; “ you’ve threatened me with that these 
five years. But if you want to, why ” (and there was a touch 
of sternness in his voice) “ do it, and don’t talk about it.” 

She had made none of those threats lately, but more 
than once had longed to say: “Ned, don’t you think a 
husband ought to be a help to his wife, and when she is in 
trouble, or when she feels like doing something wrong, 
oughtn’t he to protect her and save her?” but the words 
had never been spoken, though any man less careless than 
Mr. Booth must have seen the trouble lately going on in 
his wife’s mind. It was his duty to see it, but he did not; 
her terror-struck wakings at night, the bare feet thrust 
suddenly out, and carrying her startled and trembling into 
the midst of the room, the stifled cries when asleep, the 
half broken words. No! no! 1 can not or I will not! All 
these signs of brain and heart disturbance might have 
aroused the attention of some husbands, but they passed 
unnoticed by Edgar Booth. Only, this morning, Berry 
felt; that all his short-comings toward her were less than 


58 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


nothing, in the scales of her gigantic debt toward him. 
For she had withdrawn from him her heart — after so many 
trials she had at last taken it away from him and he did 
not know it, but in his careless way neglected to look into 
the casket to make sure that he held it safe! Perhaps his 
very security in it made her feel more guiltily her theft — 
it was like robbing a child that is asleep, or going away 
with a treasure that a man has placed in your hands for 
safety. 

“ But I’ll get it back again for- you !” she said aloud ? 
and with a sob that might have wakened him; but he 
still slept on, with an almost sculptural severity in the 
Greek lines of his face, so that, but for his breathing, you 
might have thought him dead. 

As she gazed at him, she thought that there might be 
physical reasons for the lassitude, the increasing apathy, 
and loss of life and spirits he had shown during the last 
few years. He was not so when she had married him — 
scholar and student though he might be — and many 
memories of romps and jokes, of quips and quirks that 
they had shared together, rushed back to-day upon her 
mind. Was it she who had saddened him? did any fail- 
ure of his love for and duty to her weigh upon him? No! 
she was too deep in his heart to leave room for any rival, 
and if she sometimes thwarted and tormented him, and 
if, as he sometimes said, he often kissed her because, if 
he did not, he should smack her, she knew that it was no 
discontent with her or his home that had wrought this 
change in him. 

So absorbed was she in her thoughts of him, that she 
never looked at the letter in her hand; and Hugo Holt re- 
ceded to an immeasurable distance, but not beyond the 
boundary of her mental sight. 

Presently Mr. Booth opened his eyes, and, seeing her 
there, and the trouble in her face, he put his long arms 
round her, and stroked her head. 


MURDEIi OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 59 

“ Do you feel quite well, Ned?” she said, as she kissed 
him, move fondly far than she had done for some months; 

You looked so pale in your sleep just now.” 

“ I am perfectly well,” he said, rather sharply, and she 
knew, as she moved away, that she had vexed him. He 
always hated to be thought ill, and he had a morbid 
shrinking from pain, or the witnessing of pain in others, 
that amounted almost to a monomania. 

“I am perfectly well,” he replied, “ only rather worried 
about the lawsuit; but we shall know better how things 
stand when you have seen Hugo Holt.” 

“ Couldn’t you come with me?” she said — lingering a 
moment on her way to the door. 

“ My dear child, I have to beat the College of Surgeons 
all the morning. And you understand a great deal more 
about the business than I do.” 

And Berry urged him no more. She was not afraid of 
Hugo Holt now. 


CHAPTER IX. 

“ Such griefs "with such men well agree, 

But wherefore, wherefore fall on me? 

To be beloved is all I need, 

And when I love, I love indeed.” 

Above Hugo Holt’s chambers in Lely Place should 
have been inscribed “ The World’s Fair,” instead of the 
modest 9, painted to right and left of the entrance. 

For hither came the great and the wealthy, the wise and 
the foolish, the Jew and the Christian, the peeress and 
the player, the defrauder and the defrauded, and they 
made a long and brilliant following day by day, as they 
impatiently waited their turn for admission to the man 
who listened much, and said little, and ticked off his 
clients with a rapidity that a less shrewd and cautious 
man might have striven to imitate in vain. 


60 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER? 


Berry’s heart sunk when she found herself in the midst 
of an assemblage variously afflicted in reputation, morals, 
or estate; and she had consigned herself to three or four 
hours of waiting, when a clerk approached, and led the 
way through a volley of indignant glauces that should 
have shriveled her, to an inner room, communicating 
with another, where he left her. 

She satjquite still, recalling vividly the first time she had 
come here, and wishing with all her heart and soul that 
she had never crossed the threshold. Again she saw the 
door at the end unclose and a dark stern- faced man come 
toward her, and as she gazed at the panels it seemed al- 
most as if by mere looking she could summon him, -and 
*that it would be for the first time in their lives that they 
would meet. She started up and began to look at some 
of the portraits on the walls. She had been looking at 
them a full half hour when a door opened and shut sharply 
behind her, and she half turned, knowing that it was 
Hugo Holt. 

He had received her card without surprise, only he bad 
expected her sooner. He knew that in love it is only an 
imperative question of which can live longest without the 
other, and her patience had given out first, as a woman’s 
always does. 

But as she turned her fresh morning face over her shoul- 
der he knew that, from whatever reason she had run away 
from him some weeks ago, she was in no fear of him to- 
day — that it was only a charming woman in difficulties 
who had come to see him. 

“ How do you do?” she said. “ I am so sorry, so dread- 
fully sorry, to be obliged to come and worry you; .indeed, 
I would not if I could possibly have helped it.” 

He dropped her hand from his cold clasp and sat down 
at his table, motioning her to a chair. Her first impres- 
sion of him was not softened as she looked at the austere, 
grave face before her, and she colored as she said: 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER? 61 

“We have some bad news of the lawsuit about which I 
consulted you last December. Perhaps you will remem- 
ber that my husband’s estates, which he inherited from a 
cousin, are claimed by another person, whom until re- 
cently we believed to be an impostor. But there is some 
fresh evidence. I have all the papers here.” And she 
produced a little packet tied smartly up with a blue rib- 
bon and gave it to him. 

She sat watching the dark lines of his face as he rapid- 
ly mastered the facts before him, and, in spite of herself, 
a feeling of joy took possession of her. She was in his 
company, she might even be in it five whole minutes. 
And it was only when she was out of his sight that she 
was afraid of him! Once within it, she felt that her 
tongue recovered its tartness, her cheek its color, and if 
her hand had trembled when it tied her bonnet-strings, it 
was firm enough when it touched his just now. 

He looked up suddenly, and caught her eyes with that 
earnest happy look in them, fixed on his face. 

“Why were you out when I called the other day?” he- 
said. 

“Did you call?” said Berry, very much taken aback, 
but preserving a great air of innocence, 

“ You know I did. Who was that good-looking young 
man I saw you walking with that afternoon?” 

“Oh! a very good young man; he was at Ladisloes 
that night you came. By the way, why did you come to 
Ladisloes?” 

“ You have not answered my question,” he said; “why 
'did you run away the other day? Were you afraid of me?” 

Berry laughed. 

“ If I were afraid,” she said, “ should I be venturing 
into the lion’s den? And if I did — happen to go out that 
day, I” — the corners of her mouth trembled — “I sent 
you a card for my Friday afternoons!” 


62 MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

She knew by the expression of his face, as well as if he 
had spoken, that he would have liked to beat her. 

“ Do you think Mr. Poore is so good-looking?” she 
said, still with that look of mischief in her face, “I like 
him so much— and I hate good-looking men!” 

“Then perhaps you will like me,” he said, regarding 
her with the air of calm observation that seemed natural 
to his features, as if his calmness were in his blood, and 
not assumed or acquired. 

“Yes,” she said, looking at him quickly, eagerly even, 
“I suppose you are plain.” 

He smiled — then both burst out laughing. 

“This is^iot business,” said Berry, drawing herself up, 
shocked at herself, and at the strides to intimacy that she 
was making with Mr. Holt. For a minute or two he re- 
turned to the papers, and she got up from her chair, and 
moved toward the window. 

She was thinking how strange it was that her heart had 
not beat one whit the faster; that no tremor, no nervous- 
ness had hindered her speech to him since she entered the 
room; that for weeks and weeks she had thought of him 
with mingled fear and longing. Her husband’s spell must 
be still upon her, or, with the cessation of Hugo’s liking 
for her, her own fancy had died out Yes, it must be 
that, and she might be thankful that she was safe beyond 
the reach of temptation. 

She turned to see him standing close behind her, and 
he observed how the light just tipped the red-brown of 
her hair, the white of her rounded chin, and touched 
with scarlet the smooth cheek and under lip that gave 
promise of a touch of obstinacy in her character. 

“Can you come here to-morrow?” he said; “it is im- 
possible for me to give an opinion on the case to-day.” 

“To-morrow!” She echoed the sound like an urchin 
to whom the magic word “holiday” is shouted when he 
expects “school!” 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 63 

“Would not my husband do as well?” she said, trying 
to keep out of her eyes the joy that danced in them. 

“No — your husband would not do,” he said, coldly, as 
he turned aside. “The notes in these papers are all in 
your handwriting; you seem to understand the matter 
thoroughly. ” 

“ Good-bye!” she said, as she put out her hand, “ there 
are such crowds of people waiting for you — and the women 
are all so pretty!” 

“ Are they?” he said, carelessly, as they clasped hands; 
“ then I shall expect you to-morrow.” 

And she thought he looked more stern than ever, when 
he bowed for a moment over her hand, before he opened 
the door for her to pass out. 


CHAPTER X. 

“ And if she moves unquietly, 

Perchance ’tis but the blood so free 
Comes hack and tingles in her feet; 

No doubt she has a vision sweet.” 

Some of the purest, happiest moments of Berry’s life 
were about this time spent in Hugo Holt’s room. They 
were brief moments, snatched in the midst of business 
consultations, of clerks coming in and out to their chief, 
of telegrams and dispatches, or even an occasional in- 
vasion of tile same spirited fair one who had made a bold 
dash for his door, and even stormed it in spite of the 
sleepless custodian without. 

It was in the snatches of talk that she got with him, 
while clerks were copying the necessary instructions, or 
papers being prepared for her husband’s case, that Berry 
discovered what a delightful companion he could be. 
Living as he did in the midst “ of the best that is thought 
and known in the world,” with a brilliant intellect, and a 


64 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER !* 


temperament keenly alive to every form of beauty in 
nature and art, he saw and enjoyed life from a standpoint 
that few commanded; and if he labored continuously, he 
yet knew how to extract the greatest possible pleasure out 
of the materials for happiness put in his way. He could 
have said with Byron “l have lived my life;” and he 
might have added that he continued to live it in the 
fullest sense of the word. His mind grasped everything, 
just as nothing escaped his observation, and as from the 
high pressure at which he lived he h*ad no time for trivial- 
ities, so in his talk you found none. Involuntarily Berry 
felt her intellectual life quickened, and her mind become 
informed by his; a word of lightning suggestion was 
enough for her, and for the first time she knew the keen 
delight of a bright clever woman in a companionship that 
at once taught and brought out all that was best in her. 
He had been everywhere, he knew everything, the lightest 
of his words seemed more pregnant to her than the best 
conversation of any man she had hitherto met — and she 
had probably met all the best talkers, and most brilliant 
men of the day. 

But precious as these flying moments of converse were, 
she never sought to prolong them; and when the papers 
were ready, she would be gone like a swallow, and Hugo 
Holt never sought to stay her, never by word or look 
transgressed the line of conduct that he had laid down for 
himself on the morning of her first visit, now some three 
weeks ago. 

She wondered how she could ever have been afraid of 
him, how her stupid, mad infatuation could have so ter- 
rified her into such a wrong estimate of him; and at this 
period of her life no infant ever felt safer in the arms of 
its mother, than Berry did in the society of Hugo Holt. 

On the other hand, as if her purity had touched his 
heart with its wand, he was growing to feel for her very 
differently to when she had snatched his fancy, more 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 65 

quickly and violently perhaps than any woman had ever 
clone yet. 

He grew to long for a sight of the little bright head 
shining among his books; to feel as if a sunbeam had 
made its home with him when she moved to and fro, look- 
ing at the pictures on the walls; to listen when alone *f or 
the sound of the voice that let fall such delightful things, 
never a spiteful or unmeaning one, and to place her 
higher and higher above other women, because she was at 
once so bright and — to him — so lovely and so good. 

1 don’t know what the quality of mind and heart may 
be that makes one woman so the complement of a man’s 
nature that he is perfectly happy in her company, and 
only feels his existence complete when she is with him. 
Probably every man has felt this at least once in his life, 
and probably it is at its greatest perfection when its ob- 
ject is unattainable, for of its very nature it would cease 
were such happiness always within its reach. 

When the woman is equally attracted — and whether it 
be animal magnetism, or will-force, or the like to like, 
who shall say? — then the risk run by these two persons is 
a terrible one. They will act and react upon each other, 
and the very strength of will that drags them apart, will 
but the further precipitate them toward each other. But 
I think that at this time Hugo Holt willed only that she 
should be happy, and that no trouble of any kind should 
ever come upon her. 

One day, and it was her last visit but one to him, she 
said: 

“ She looks very nice, doesn’t she?” 

“Who?” 

Berry pointed to one of the prettiest portraits in the 
room, carefully turned with its face to the wall. A thrill 
shot through him. Was she jealous? But he only said, 

“ You are different from every other woman I ever knew in 

3 


66 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


my life,” and when he next looked up, the picture was 
hanging with its eyes fixed on him as before. 

Berry sometimes wondered how many of those women 
had been, or were in love with him — and with how many 
he himself was in love. Of course he flirted — what else 
could be expected of so rich and celebrated a man? His 
only hinderance, probably, was lack of time— that moral 
strait- waistcoat in which many a man is encased, to his 
own immense benefit, and an abiding satisfaction to his 
own virtue. 

On the same day she said to him: 

“ Which is the master in your house — you or Mrs. Holt?” 

“Upon my word,” he said, “ I don’t know.” 

Berry looked at him keenly, then she clapped her hands 
softly. 

“But I do,” she cried, “it is you. If you had pro- 
tested that you were master, I should know that you were 
not.” 

Then she sighed. 

“ She is happy to have some one to talk to her as you 
do,” she said. 

“ I do not talk to her,” he said; “ at least, not as I talk 
to you — she would not understand me.” 

“ But she has gone with you to all these places,” said 
Berry, looking at a book-shelf full of books about the 
places he had visited. 

“ Not at all. But why does not Booth take you abroad? 
For your art’s sake you should travel, you should see 
everything.” 

“My art?” Berry laughed rather drearily. “ That is 
nearly dead — strangled in me by my surroundings. But 
it was always a poor thing, never worth the cultivation.” 

“ I should like to see how you work,” he said. “ I 
shall come some day to watch you at your easel.” 

“You will be welcome,” she said, simply, and the day 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 67 

came when Hugo Holt did see her work— but never in 
Brook Street. 


CHAPTER XI. 

“ Rejoice, and men will seek you, 

Grieve, and they turn and go; 

They want full measure of all your pleasure, 

But they do not want your woe ; 

Be glad, and your friends are many; 

Be sad, and you lose them all; 

There are none to decline your nectared wine. 

But alone you must drink life’s gall.” 

Mr. Booth did not appear to find it odd that his wife 
should go four or five times to Mr. Holt’s rooms to attend 
to her husband’s business, and, concluding that if anyone 
could bring affairs to a successful conclusion, that man 
was Hugo Holt, he immersed himself more deeply in 
science than ever. 

The day of the trial came. His presence was not re- 
quired at it, but about one o’clock Berry received a letter 
from Hugo Holt, sent by hand, asking her if she could 
call upon him at once. 

She trembled a little as she read it, for she knew that 
their case was lost. 

When she had dressed, she passed into her boudoir, and 
looked round it much as if she had never seen it before, 
though now she noted everything, even the pattern of the 
porcelain tiles, the pure white of its china, the white and 
blue-green of the walls, her favorite bdoks in the long, low 
book-shelf, and the table at which she wrote; then she 
pushed aside one of the blue and white portieres, and 
went into the painting-room beyond. 

A half-finished picture stood on the easel — she had not 
advanced a step with it during the last three weeks, and 
her palette lay where she had dashed it down, in a fit of 
utter self-disgust and hatred of her own work. 


68 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


She picked the palette up, and arranged the brushes, 
then she went out, and down to the drawing-rooms, where 
she walked with the same slow and heedful step; and here, 
I regret to say, all sorts of Biblical texts recurred to her 
mind, one of which was, “ The house that thou madest 
so fair for thine own self,” and others, too, crowded upon 
her as she went down into the dining-room, sober in its 
maroon tints and old oak, save for the china shields and 
brasses upon the walls, and the great bowls of flowers 
wherever place for them could be found. At the end of 
this room, a door led into a long, narrow apartment, 
choked to the ceiling with books, some of which Edgar had 
selected for his wife to read, but they had not improved 
her mind, they only gave her mental indigestion. Now 
she looked at these bookstand wished she had read more 
of them. 

She found her husband where she had expected to find 
him, in a room readied by another door-way to the left, 
and, though she did not often enter by this way, he neither 
looked up, nor turned his head as she approached. 

Again she was struck by that look of pallor, of approach- 
ing illness that he had reasoned her out of seeing during 
the past few weeks, and her heart sunk for him, and the 
news she would have to tell him. 

When she was quite close, he looked up, passed his hand 
over his brow, and kissed her. 

She held his head close to her bosom as she said: 

“Ned, T am afraid there will be bad news presently — 
about the lawsuit. Mr. Holt wants to see me.” 

Mr, Booth got up from his chair, rubbed his hands, 
then kissed Berry again. 

“Poor little girl!” he said, “you are quite pale; but 
don’t take it to heart so much. We shall have a few 
hundreds a year, I suppose, and as long as we have got 
one another, and our health — and my books,” he added, 
looking round, “ we can be very happy.” 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


69 


Berry’s lips quivered, but she said nothing. A man 
never understands how tables and chairs may come to 
assume the shape of old friends in a woman’s heart, so 
that to part with them is like taking away a piece of her 
body itself. 

“ Good-bye, dear,” she said; “ I will be back as soon as 
possible.” 

He detained her to embrace her, with something of the 
ardor of his days of courtship. 

“We can be very happy still,” he said; “but, mind, 
Berry — you must not argue. Except for that, and tidy- 
ing- up, you are the best little woman in the world.” 

Berry laughed. As he did not analyze that laugh he 
thought she was taking things very well, and, after stand- 
ing on the door-step to wave his long, thin hand at her, 
and smile, and nod his head several times, he went back 
much in his usual frame of mind to his studies. 

Berry was not kept a moment waiting at Lely Place 
that day, but when she found herself in Hugo Holt’s 
room, it was empty. 

A restless, miserable feeling came over her as she 
thought of how it was probably the last time she would 
come hither; and the feeling of safety, of happiness that 
she had lately known here, suddenly left her. 

She dreaded to hear the door open, and looked in a 
small glass near to see if her face betrayed her, but she 
could only see that it was pale, and that her eyes were 
shining like stars. And then she heard him come in, and 
went to meet him. 

His eyes, too, were brilliant, and there was more color 
than usual in his face; perhaps he held her hand a mo- 
ment longer, too. Then he said: 

“ 1 have bad news for you. The lawsuit has gone 
against Mr. Booth, and the new heir takes everything.” 

“ I knew you had sent for me to tell me that,” she 
said, quite calmly. “Thank you very much for all you 


70 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


have done for us — if the case could have been saved you 
would have saved it.” 

He saw how pale she was, her eyes wandered round the 
room as if she saw nothing, and if she had looked at him, 
she must have seen that he, too, was unlike himself. 

“ Is there anything that lean do for you, any help I 
can give you about your future arrangements?” he said. 

“ Thank you again — but our solicitor will see to all 
that. I shall go to him straight from here.” 

“ And what will you do?” he said, and she understood 
that his question referred to her future. 

“ I shall work now,” she said, looking down at her 
hand, from which she had just now stripped the glove, 
and Hugo Holt looked at it too, at the pink and the 
white, and the azure of it, and thought how frail a bul- 
wark it was between her afid destitution. 

He did not speak, but when she looked at him, her own 
eyes filled with tears. 

“It is not so bad as all that,” she said, trembling. 
“Ned has a few hundreds a year — about as many as we 
have lost thousands — and it will keep us from starving, 
even if I never touch a paint-brush again.” 

Her face was like the sweet, sorrowful one of a child 
that one longs to take in one’s arms, and part the hair 
from its brow, and console it. Hugo drew a sharp, in- 
ward breath, but made no step forward, nor answered 
her. 

“ And you have been so kind to me,” she went on with 
trembling lips, and indeed in that moment she felt that a 
bond closer and dearer than that of love existed between 
them. “ I was rude to you once, but I am sorry for it 
now, and I have often wanted to beg your forgiveness, 
and in the future can we not be friends?” 

His brow grew dark beneath the blood that surged up 
to it, her very sweetness, her lovableness was pleading 
against her — had she been less sweet, less perfectly suited 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


71 


to him in the body, soul, and mind, he might have been 
her friend only, and so have spared her. He turned from 
her and passed out by an inner door, closing it sharply be- 
hind him as he went. 

For a minute she stood gazing at the shut door with 
dilated eyes. 

“Is he coming back?” she said, in a whisper, a sudden 
awful sense of loneliness and misery oppressing her; in- 
voluntarily she clasped her hands together as she turned 
to go, but had not gone many steps when she knew that 
he had returned. 

As, blinded by her tears, she put out both hands and 
groped for the door, something in her attitude and look 
reminded Hugo of that most pathetic and lovely picture 
where Lady Jane Grey, with covered eyes, feels her way 
to the block. Would he not remember it again in the 
days that were to come, when, having blinded her eyes 
with love, his hands should surely guide the woman he 
loved to a place of shameful death? 

Oh! woe for her and for him that they did not part in 
that hour as friends for ever and ever; ay, but as friends 
who should never meet again! 

As he wiped the tears from her cheeks, she smiled up 
at him, and promised that she would shed no more, and 
when they were all dried she said: 

“ I want you to make me a promise, that you will not 
come to see me until I send for you.” 

“ When will that be?” he said, slowly, grudgingly, his 
eyes growing to her face. 

“ I can not tell. But you will promise?” 

“ On condition that you send for me soon.” 

“No,” she said, “it will not be soon. And we shall 
be very poor, and perhaps ” — but the look in his face 
checked her words. 

“ I would go to you in a garret,” he said, passionately; 
then, perhaps to faintly still the desperate hunger that 


72 MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

was in bis heart, he lifted her hand to his dry lips, and 
kissed it. 

The burning touch sent no thrill through her, but 
moved by a sudden impulse she stooped her own bright 
head over his other hand, and pressed her lips upon it. 

“No! no!” he cried, stepping back, and before he could 
detain her, even had he willed to do it, she was gone; and 
that was all the farewell that lay between Beryl Booth 
and Hugo Holt during the long months in which they 
were divided. 


CHAPTER XII. 

“ Feast, and your halls are crowded ; 

Fast, and the world goes by; 

Succeed and give, and it helps you live, 

But no man can help you die. 

There is room in the halls of pleasure 
For a long and lordly train; 

But one by one we must all file on 
Through the narrow aisle of pain.” 

September 10 th, 1884. 

“My dearest Hetty, — You upbraid me with not writing to 
you, but it is because I have had nothing to say, and I used to have 
so much! You know that after our furniture and the lease of our 
house was sold we went to some of Ned’s people in Norfolk, and 
when we came back to town early in July we settled down in these 
rooms, and have been here ever since. We might have gone to the 
sea-side, but Ned said he must be near the places where he gets his 
books of reference, etc., and so we have been baking and grilling 
here for two months. He sits hour after hour in a little room that 
I have fitted up into a study for him, with the hair wet on his fore- 
head, and as pale as a nicely boiled turnip, but he never complains* 
and seems perfectly happy. He has got all that he wants. His 
books, his pickles, his chessboard and men, his slippers, and lastly 
— me. As to his other surroundings, he doesn’t care a button, and 
I might hang the room with Eastern stuffs, and furnish them with 
gold and silver, and 1 don’t believe he would see the difference, and 
I am sure he would prefer them as they are. But oh 1 Hetty, I 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


73 


grieve over my dear little house — every day I miss it more, and my 
present surroundings cause me positive pain. I love all beautiful 
and pleasant things — they satisfy some craving in my nature that 
was born with me; they are food and drink to me, and I seem to be 
always hungry, and to grow less and less used to my altered life. 
The woman who can be happy with a magenta feather and a green 
pair of gloves is a person to be envied: you never hear her moans in 
three volumes, you do not meet her with orange-colored hair and 
black eyebrows in aesthetic society, she either bides at home in the 
midst of artificial flowers under glass cases, or goes to the play with 
her ’Arry, supremely happy to the end. It is a curse to a woman 
with a perfect sense of what is artistic and lovely to have that sense 
outraged every minute and hour in the day. You should see my 
wall papers, and my carpets here! my bedroom, where I can con- 
veniently open the door and the wardrobe as I sit in bed, while my 
bath has to be placed half under the chimney to make room for it at 
all ! Perhaps I miss my flowers most — I never buy any now — and 
next to them, the bright society I used to mix with, and the clever 
people who came to see me. I was kept intellectually alive, but 
now I am out of it, and two or three vulgar people have cut me. 
Who are they? you will ask. They are nobodies, of course — per- 
sons dependent on the excellence of their feeds for the quality of 
their company. All my friends have stuck by me — they would come 
to me in an attic if they knew where the attic was, but I have 
thought it best neither to visit nor to return visits in our altered po- 
sition, and scarcely any one knows where to find us; and except by 
my intimate friends I shall not be missed. I neves w*as a personage 
in either smart society or in the literary or artistic sets. To succeed 
in London you must be a man, though if you are a rich woman, and 
if you spend the greater part of it in giving luncheons and dinners, 
you have a good chance of holding your own. 

“ I am growing used to my carriage and pair, with the coachman 
before, and the footman to help me up behind, that is so conveni- 
ently waiting for me in almost every street; but 1 have not yet been 
able to determine where true politeness ends, and where insolence 
begins, when I ride in it. If a man offers me his hand when I get 
in, I always say ‘ Thank you,’ and if I don’t fire the word off like 
a pistol at him, he usually squeezes my arm. Nevertheless, during 
this stifling heat I have sometimes said to Ned, ‘ Take me out some- 
where — anywhere — on the top of an omnibus even, to get away for 
a little while from these stuffy rooms!’ But I might as well ask the 
monument to take me out for an airing. Save for my needle-work, 


74 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


my life would be profound and utter stagnation. You will say it is 
wicked of me not to be happy in exercising the one talent that God 
has given me ; but lately the power in me to do work— good work 
— has shriveled up, and only aimless fancies come and go in my 
mind as I stand in the little bare attic in which I have set up my 
easel. You will say then, why do you not remember your public? 
I do remember it — I love my public — when I am at my lowest 
depths, and I think of the thousands to whom I have furnished 
mat ter for a laugh or a tear, I am cheered. They do not pay for it, 
as a rule, so perhaps they enjoy it the more, and the picture-dealer 
enjoys the profits, so that we are all satisfied, or ought to be. But 
not even the thought of these many invisible friends can inspire my 
brush, and I feel as if only some violent emotion or shock would 
ever restore in me the power to paint again. Shall j^ou come back 
from Dieppe before the end of the month? No, dear — you must 
not ask that, for I know you will ask me now that you know I am 
being baked alive; but I can’t go to you— at least for a long -while. 
I am anxious about Ned, though he is perfectly easy about himself. 
But when you are well at Ladisloes, I will go to you if only for a 
day; and how we will talk! Good-bye, my dearest. Love to 
Chummy. 

“ Always your loving friend, 

“ Berry. 

“ You ask me if I have seen Mr. Holt lately. I have not for over 
four months; but I see by the papers that he returned from Egypt 
yesterday, and I am going to write and ask him to come and see 
me.” 


“Dieppe, Sept. 15 th, ’84. 

“ My darling Berry, — I know your obstinacy of old, and that 
it’s no good to try and get you here. But why in the name of health 
can’t you go to Ladisloes, and stay there till I come back? It is 
only ten miles from town, and your spouse could get up and down 
easily, and carry all his musty, fusty, rusty old books with him, if 
the library down there isn’t enough to satisfy the most abject book* 
worm that ever crawled! And I do think he ought to be ashamed 
of himself, keeping you in tow r n in such weather! Why didn’t he 
marry a chessboard, or an Encyclopaedia Britannica, instead of a 
convivial little soul like you, avIio never was born to live alone? I 
think you have been a little fool about him, and far too strict in de- 
nying yourself everything that he could not share. You would go 
nowhere without him; you refused to be introduced to all sorts of 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


75 


high people who would be glad to know you, but didn’t want him; 
and if you had not been so absurdly straitlaced, you would have 
been one of the most brilliant and courted women of the day now, 
no matter what money losses you might have sustained. You are 
thrown away upon him, my dear, and you can tell him so, with my 
compliments, if you please! Now if you were Mrs. Holt (how odd 
it is that these clever men always marry second-rate women) you 
w T ould be a supremely happy woman. But as you can’t be, take 
very good care that you don’t become his sweetheart! You are in 
far more danger of him now, in your narrowed life, than ever you 
were before; and if you are not careful, every trifle connected with 
him will assume gigantic proportions in your mind. Don’t see 
him! but go to Ladisloes instead, and I will leave Dieppe a fort- 
night earlier on your account. I am rather worried about Lola; 
she coughs a great deal, and I should not be at all surprised if I 
have to take her abroad for the winter. If so, you must come too! 
I wish that you were here; your brush would not be long idle. I 
don’t wonder that you can’t paint. Who could expect it when you 
never travel, and have never been out of your own little island in 
your life?” 

Mrs. Booth had got thus far in her friend’s letter when 
the door of her sitting-room opened, and Frowzibella, the 
servant, announced Mr. Holt. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

“ And if I love thee, what is that to thee?” 

“ Why did you not send for me before?” he said, when 
they had shaken hands and were sitting opposite each 
other on two ugly horse-hair chairs. 

She knew then that he had not felt their separation half 
as keenly as she had done — that he had, to a certain ex- 
tent, forgotten her— but that was inevitable. In a man’s 
crowded life, and such a life as his, it was impossible for 
him to keep the mirror of his memory for one face only. 

iC \ have been away,” she said, “and so have you. I 


76 MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

envied you in Egypt — and if you had time, I should ask 
you to tell me all about it.” 

“ There is so little to tell,” he said. “ I think that the 
pleasure of our travels depends on the people who are 
with us, and not upon the things we actually see. And 
what have you been doing during these four months?” 

“ I have been idle,” she said, “and wicked. I told you 
that I was going to work — and I have done nothing!” 

He gave one quick glance round the room, then at her, 
and said: 

“You have no flowers.” 

She colored brilliantly. 

“ How did you know that I cared for them?” she said. 

“Because I have never seen you without a flower, or 
the suggestion of one somewhere about your dress.” 

She drew a little work-table toward her, the only sign 
of her occupation in the bare, gaudy room, and took from 
it a half-stitched wristband; but when she would have 
worked, she found the thread loose, and held her needle 
up to thread it. For once, however, her will was power- 
less to control her actions, and after a moment, Mr. Holt 
said: 

“ You can not see to thread that — let me do it.” 

She let him take it, and watched him as he did it — a 
little awkwardly perhaps — but cleverly; and she thought 
that with such fine, beautiful hands it would be almost 
impossible for him to do anything ill. But he kept the 
scrap of work in his hands as he said, “ You are not look- 
ing well. How long have you been back in town?” 

“ Since the first of July.” 

He made an impatient movement; perhaps he was con- 
trasting her time with his, during the past six months; 
perhaps he was remembering how she had looked when 
in his private room she had first come up to meet him; 
then: 

“ You must get to work again,” he said, abruptly, 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


77 


almost decisively; (i make-up your mind that you will be- 
gin to-morrow.” 

“ I have no subject,” she said. “I am like Charlotte 
Bronte in one thing only, that 1 can not work when I 
have accumulated. — when I feel — nothing. If some one 
came to me now, and said, *' I will give you a thousand 
guineas for a sketch,’ I could not paint it.” 

If she had glanced at him then, she would have seen 
that slight in-drawing of the lips, which was the only 
sign of feeling that he ever showed. Then he said: 

“ I like you in white.” 

She looked down at her gown, and blushed. 

“ My washer-woman is my only extravagance,” she 
said, and held out her hand for the needle-work. 

He let her take it — no man let trifles go more easily, or 
great issues with more difficulty than Hugo Holt. 

He saw that she planted her stitches perfectly, and with 
a firm hand. A more cruel man would have said some- 
thing to shake it, and exert his power; but this one had 
too much inherent strength to care about displays, and lie 
watched her with a sense of pleasure in the womanliness 
of her occupation. 

“ You have not told me about Egypt,” she said. 

“And you have not told me about yourself.” 

Berry laughed, and into her face came some of the old 
gamesome look that he knew. 

“ Oh!” she cried, “ you are determined to talk neither 
of yourself nor of your enemy. But I have nothing to 
tell you — ‘ Ici fy suis, icify reste ’ — probably to my dy- 
ing day. We are conveniently placed for the Museum, 
the College of Surgeons, and other emporiums of knowl- 
edge — and if I want a glimpse of the green, why, there’s 
the square opposite.” 

“ Does not your husband mean to go in for some em- 
ployment?” he said. 


78 MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

“No. His life-work is liis book — I would not let him 
do any other work if he wished it.” 

“But these people who have cut you out of everything, 
have they offered nothing?” 

“ Why should they? For one thing the heir doesn’t 
know how to spell — so he can’t write to us, and I doubt 
if his wife can help him, for you know he married his 
cook.” 

Mr. Holt walked to the window and looked out. She 
watched him standing there, and thought how well and 
sunburned he looked, how supple and good his figure, with 
an air of distinction that marked him out amidst crowds. 
The sense of repose on his strength that always came to 
her in his company was strong upon her then, and when 
lie turned back to her the work was lying on her knee, and 
joy danced in the dimples of her cheeks, upon her lips, 
and in her eyes. 

“You look better already,” he said. “I am afraid 
Booth leaves you too much alone. But you will be more 
yourself when you settle down to work again.” 

“ Why do you take such an interest in my work?” she 
said, thinking how different was this keen solicitude for 
her fame, to Mr. Booth’s perfect indifference to her pur- 
suits. 

“ You have genius,” he said, “ and it must not be 
wasted.” 

“ Genius?” she cried, “ oh, no! Did you ever know a 
woman who had genius keep her house clean inside and 
out, and have fresh curtains up every fortnight? If you 
had seen how tidy I used to be — no, decidedly I have no 
genius. My husband is very clever— but I am only — or so 
the critics say — lucky.” 

“ You are far more clever than your husband,” said 
Mr. Holt, coolly. “ I should say he was very good at 
amassing knowledge, but he has not an original mind — 
and you have.”, 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


79 


(t But his is a great one,” said Beryl, jealous for Edgar’s 
honor, “and of course all that I do must seem very frivo- 
lous to him. Yet I sometimes think of what Oliver Wen- 
dell Holmes says about scientific men,” she added, rather 
sadly; “ and I am afraid that it is true. But J am proud 
of your good opinion all the same,” she added, “ though 
you ought to scold me as Hans Andersen’s mother did 
when she told him that ‘ if he would only get rid of his 
own little I ’ he would do very well.” 

“But I would rather hear you talk about yourself than 
any one else in the world.” 

“And I would rather hear you talk about yourself than 
any one else in the world.” 

He smiled, and shook his head. 

“ Let us talk of our neighbors, then,” he said. “ You 
remember Mrs. Q ’s elopement a little while ago?” 

“ Yes. She was a wicked woman — she left two or 
three little children behind.” 

“Her husband has taken her back.” 

“He took her back?” cried Berry, with flashing eyes, 
“ how could he?” 

“He had neglected her,” said Mr. Holt, “and had 
thrown her constantly into the company of the other man.” 

“That is no reason,” said Berry, proudly; “but, oh! if 
I were wicked, and my husband took me back — what a 
life 1 would lead him, to be sure!” 

“You would not be grateful to him?” said Mr. Holt, 
his eyes drinking up the scorn and passion of her expres- 
sive face. 

“I should loathe him! It is a thing that no man 
should ever forgive, that he ought not to forgive; and, in 
her heart, the woman who is forgiven despises him, and 
only waits an opportunity to betray him a second time.” 

“You think that a woman never recovers one false step 
— perhaps the only one she has made in her life?” 

“ After marriage — never. A married woman never 


80 MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

stops at one lover. She feels her degradation, and her 
own smarting pain vents itself on him. He tires. A man 
sees himself at his noblest in the admiring light of a 
woman’s eye, at his worst when those eyes reproach him 
as the murderer of all that was best in her. So he leaves 
her, and she — ” 

Beryl broke off impatiently in her speech, and made a 
gesture as if she thrust the subject from her. 

“Then you do not think,” he said, watching her keen- 
ly, “ that a married woman might have one great passion 
in her life, and love one man truly and faithfully to the 
end ?” 

“She might do it, to her own heart-breaking loss, but, 
for the object of her love, she would have lost her charm. 
There is one quality in a woman that a man secretly values 
in her, beyond her beauty, beyond her genius (if she has 
it), beyond all the love and sweetness that she can give 
him, and that is, her modesty. Without it, she is like 
any other woman to him.” 

“ Yovl have never been tempted,” he said, rather impa- 
tiently; “you underrate the power of love and its pa- 
tience.” 

“No, I have never been tempted,” she said ruefully, 
“ perhaps it is because I never allowed any one to come 
near enough;” and she laughed aloud with the heart-whole 
laugh of a child who, never having been burned, has no 
dread of the fire. 

“ Some day your turn will come,” he said quietly, as he 
got up to put on his overcoat. 

“ You are going?” said Berry, in a voice that she 
thought sounded gay, while the color ebbed out of her 
face, and her hands fell weak and helpless on her knees. 

“ Yes. You will let me come and see you again?” 

“If you have time. But you will not.” 

“ I shall come. How tall yon are!” he said, as she 
stood up beside him, and he took one of her poor little 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 81 

hands in his; “ and how lovely,” he added, as he kissed 
her palm. 

She looked at him wistfully, eagerly, as if she were try- 
ing to imprint his features on her mind; then she said 
“good-bye,” as brightly as if she were greeting him with 
a “good-morrow.” 

He kissed her hand again, and went out. From where 
she stood, she saw him get into his carriage, and without 
looking back, drive away. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

“ Sometimes the test of faithfulness in marriage is an enchanted 
horn, out of which no unchaste man or woman can drink without 
spilling some of the liquor contained in it; or it is a mantle which 
will fit none but chaste women, but shrivels into air when assumed 
by one who has betrayed her lord— or it is a cup of tears which be- 
come dark in the hands of inconstancy.” 

As if the armfuls of flowers that Hugo Holt brought 
her each time he came, put new freshness and beauty into 
her starved life, Berry began to recover her brightness 
and spirits, and her power of imagination and work re- 
turned. 

She would go upstairs every morning to her attic stu- 
dio almost as swiftly as a bird, and, while there, would 
sing to herself so happily that the maid-of-all-work, 
listening, would nod her shaggy head and say: 

“ She makes the house laugh!” 

Edgar Booth felt the change in her too, and in his ab- 
stracted way rejoiced. He had come to miss the tricks 
she loved to play him, the perpetual ripples of life that 
her frolicksome ways had made round him; but he never 
thought of connecting the change in her with Hugo Holt. 
He was usually out, on the occasions of that gentleman’s 
rare visits; but once he happened to be at home, and 


82 MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

Berrv had the opportunity of hearing some learned con- 
versation between the pair. 

But whether Mr. Holt took away with him as much 
pleasure as he left behind it would be hard to say, but 
knowing his character, I think that long before Decem- 
ber he must have discovered that she was even further 
out of his reach now than when he first met her. 

If her eyes expressed joy at his coming, her tongue had 
developed an unexpected sharpness that surprised him; 
and not the most experienced woman of the world could 
have better turned aside his subtle hints of love than did 
this one, who so frankly delighted in his company as bon 
camarade. 

For a woman who was not a mondame, but who knew 
her world thoroughly, there was a curious simplicity in 
her attitude toward him. As her trust in him grew, so 
his fascination for her lessened; familiarity to a certain 
extent bred contempt, and this quiet, cultivated man who 
sat by her side and talked to her as she worked, as if no 
such spot as Lely Place existed, gradually became harm- 
less in her eyes as a lover, though she hugged herself 
with the thought that she had got him now safely for her 
friend. 

He was very strong, very patient at this time, his self- 
control was so great that it seemed easy to lead him, and 
while he was lulling her fears to rest, she did not know 
that by his very strength and reticence he was charming 
the heart out of her breast, and binding it securely to his 
own. 

It is odd how a woman will go on loving a man more 
and more, yet only want him for her friend (and perhaps 
no man realizes how much longer she will cling to an 
affection than a passion), and how a man will go on loving 
a woman more and more — for himself. The one wants a 
colorless shadow that will yet content her; the man wants 
the real living woman, or he will leave her. Ineradicable, 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 83 

planted even deeper in the human heart than the love of 
life, is the love of man for woman, and beyond his am- 
bition, his duty, his successes, is his determination to ob- 
tain that which he has, with his whole soul, once coveted. 
In those lightning moments when Hugo Holt and Berry 
seemed to talk of everything in heaven ‘and earth, the 
conversation used persistently to return to the theme of 
love, principally in those aspects when it became a crime, 
though the world would shrug its shoulders, and at its 
worst called it une indiscretion. 

Berry’s views were uncompromising on the point, and 
the insidious arguments of the man of the world fell flat 
against the shield that she opposed to them. Perhaps the 
devil smiled when he saw the false security in which she 
was lapped; perhaps he laughed when he heard her try- 
ing to teach Hugo Holt that a woman may have a good 
influence over a man’s life, though his love for her may 
at its rise have been a sin. Hugo endured all her sweet 
little lectures like an angel, and was a stoic under the 
slight liberties she permitted herself with him, such as a 
touch of the hand, or a bit of news read over his shoulder, 
or one of his own flowers placed in his button-hole; but 
he meant to revenge himself by and by. 

He thought that he had long ago taken the full meas- 
ure of her bodily and mental charms; but he was mistaken. 
Each time that he saw her, he got some new glimpse of 
her character, and when he was surest of her, he found 
himself most mistaken. 

“ You would have suited me,” he said, at the end of his 
fourth visit, when, having helped him on with his coat, 
she was standing before him. 

“And I am not at all sure that you would have suited 
me,” she said, gravely. 

“I should like to beat you,” he said, as quietly as herself* 

Berry laughed. 

“I have heard you described as the best-bred man in 


84 MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

London,” she said; “it is a pity that some of your 
admirers can not hear that speech.” 

He said, “ You are different from every other woman 
that I have ever met in my life.” 

Perhaps the devil tempted her, for she said, “Are 
you so used to women falling in love with you?” As 
she looked up, she thought how black, how glittering 
looked his eyes, as, with his head thrown back, he but- 
toned his coat. 

“Do you know,” she went on, as he did not answer, 
“I can not see anything in you, apart from your brains, 
to fall in love with.” 

But still he made her no answer, so she said, “ But you 
may love whom you please — flirt with whom you choose — 
only you must like me the best!” 

“ And how about yourself?” he said, dryly. “ I thought 
you seemed very happy with Will Strange the other night.” 

“ You were in attendance,” she said, her lips curling a 
]ittle, “ and I must talk to somebody, and he was near. 
Did you like my gown?” she added, with that impulse of 
folly which will impel a saint to forget herself, if clothes 
are concerned. 

“ I can’t remember,” he said, knitting his brows; “ but 
you looked different from everybody else.” 

“So my robe of beaten gold was wasted on you,” she 
said; “and I put one on so seldom now. I am the re- 
verse of King Cophetua’s wife — all my steps are backward 
instead of forward.” 

“When your picture is done you will have taken a new 
departure,” he said; “ you could not have painted in Brook 
Street as you will paint here.” 

“But you forget,” she said, “that all * my best work 
was done before I went to Brook Street, before I mar- 
ried.” 

“I did not know you then,” he said, with a look that 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 85 

was half-grudging, half-bitter, “but if I had, you should 
be my wife now.” 

“Oh! no!” she said, carelessly, “you forget you were 
married before I left school.” 

“ I must seem very old to you,” he said, “ but I wish 
you would love me a little,” he added, in so gentle a tone 
of reproach, that no one would have guessed that, as he 
said it, he flung self-restraint away, and made his first 
bold step toward attaining his end. 

Berry laughed quite spontaneously, then said — 

“ I shall like you always — but I can not love you.” 

“ You loved me once,” he said. 

“Yes,” she replied slowly, “that is true. I fell in 
love with you — and I longed to see you, and I fretted 
after you — but now,” she nodded her bright head tri- 
umphantly, “Fve quite got over it!” 

“Have you?” he said, gravely. “Well, I fell in love 
with you, too, and I have not got over it. You are the 
only woman in the world that I love.” 

“Oh!” she cried, clasping her hands, “do you know 
what you are doing? You are destroying the only perfect 
thing my life contains. You have made me suffer so 
much, but lately you have turned my life to sunshine — 
and now you would spoil it all, and make me miserable.” 

“ I would make you perfectly happy,” he said, “ if you 
would only love me.” 

A look of horror grew in her face as she looked at him. 

“ Have we not often talked about that?” she said, her 
gray eyes shining in her pale face, “ about wliat wicked- 
ness, what madness, such love is — and how it never lasts?” 

“Mine would last for you all my life,” he said, quietly. 

“And I should hate you,” she groaned out. “Oh! it 
must be all my fault — it must have been my bad behavior 
that has made you say this!” 

He moved as if to approach her, and she stepped back 
and back, till her head leaned against the wall. 


86 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER? 


He drew a deep breath, walked swiftly up to her, and 
kissed her gently on the mouth. 

She moaned like one suddenly struck to the ground, 
her hands fell to her sides. He could not face the anguish 
in the eyes she turned upon him. 

“ What have you done — what have you done?” she said; 
then cried out wildly, almost deliriously, “Oh! I can 
never wear the cloak again — the cloak that was not even 
crinkled at the hem — the cloak that none v of them could 
wear save Craddock’s wife, who had kissed his mouth 

“ Before he married me.” 

Then she trembled in every limb, and slipped to the floor, 
and he knew that she had fainted. 

Did he relent in his purpose as he laid her on the sofa, 
and chafed her hands, and put back the heavy hair from 
her brow? Ho! he had sworn that this woman should be 
his, and he would make her happiness, as she should make 
his. 

When he saw the first signs of returning life in her, he 
kissed her hair, and left her. 


CHAPTER XV. 

" Self-restraint is the product of a personal exertion, which in 
many instances is obtained at a great cost of feeling and will-force. 
To a large extent such a power is a native talent, and is found in 
connection with strong will-force and vigorous intellect. And there 
needs to be splendid equilibrium between the two.” 

Mrs. Booth was standing before a canvas stretched on 
her easel, and painting, as if her life depended on her toil 
being done by a given time. 

.It was a ghastly work, and there was a kind of rapt 
horror in her eyes as she painted swiftly on, the figures on 
the canvas seeming to spring into life as she touched them. 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


87 


The figures were these: on a bed, reclining at full length, 
with his arms above bis head, lay a man, whether dead or 
sleeping it was almost impossible to tell, for, though the 
morbidezza of the color Was striking, the lips, a little 
apart, suggested a breath of life that came and went fit- 
fully, but the gaunt outlines of the body, closely shrouded 
in a sheet, suggested death only. A flood of light fell on 
him from the upper part of a window, of which the lower 
half was shuttered, and more light entered the room from 
the partly opened door, round which a woman, huddling 
her skirts together, was peeping. There was something 
mocking, devilish even in the face that thus peered in on 
this dead or sleeping man — and the features were Berry’s 
own, and the man was Edgar Booth. At the foot of the 
canvas, roughly scrawled in scarlet, ran the word, “ De- 
serted.” 

As a lash with which to scourge herself and her sins, 
she was painting this picture, for her own eye alone; when 
it was done, she meant to lock it away, but look at it 
daily, and so she would have her transgressions ever in her 
mind. 

Presently she threw down the brush, and passed her 
hand over her lips as if she swept from them some stain 
she felt to be there. She had been so proud, so {Hire, no 
lightest touch had ever soiled her till now, and in heart 
and lips alike she felt burned and seared by irretrievable 
dishonor. 

“Love!” she cried aloud, “he never loved me — no 
man who loved a woman would so outrage her; and it 
is only because I am down in the world, because I am 
neglected by my husband, that he dared to do it!” 

She looked at the picture, and then want on half aloud: 

“ Poor Ned! do you ever wonder why I do not kiss you 
now? It is because I feel myself as vije a thing, as faith- 
less to you, as if I had left your roof for that of another 
man. One must be faithful in all, or not at all. When 


88 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


I looked in on yon as you lay asleep on that burning 
August morning, I was not faithful to you in heart, even 
if my lips were all your own — and that is why I have given 
myself the face of a devil, for the sin was there.” 

She walked to the window, and looked out at the swift- 
falling darkness of the short December day. 

“In every woman’s life there comes a great crisis,” she 
thought; “ George Eliot failed at hers, so did George 
Sand.” 

If she were too humble to compare herself with either 
of these two great women who had failed. Beryl yet felt 
that she could criticise and condemn them. For the veil 
had fallen from her eyes, and she knew herself to be 
tempted hard and fiercely. Will and Heart were so finely 
pitted against each other, and so skillful in attack and de- 
fense, that often it seemed a drawn game between them; 
but in her heart of hearts Berry knew that she was safe, 
and could contain her soul in the midst of the storm. 

As she leaned her head against the window-sill she 
thought bitterly of the radical difference there is between 
a man’s and a woman’s love. 

“I only want to be quiet” she thought, “only to sit 
beside him — to talk to him — and, yes, I should like to 
rest my head against his shoulder, if he would let me, 
without putting his arm round me — and a man can not 
feel it so, that she can love him so, like a woman over her 
child, and want no more, only that — perhaps it is a selfish 
love, to feel such delight in his company, and not to care 
if it is an equal delight to him to be near you — to have 
one’s joy, and eat it greedily, not caring if he be happy, 
so long as you yourself are contented.” 

The darkness had almost descended by now, blotting 
out the figures on the canvas, the colors on the palette, 
and throwing a merciful mantle over the bleak bareness 
of the common, ugly room. 

“ Is it so wrong,” she thought, looking at the muddied 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


89 


stars of light that showed through the room, “ to love — 
to feel all our best and holiest roused in us? and is it 
right to crush it back — to do violence to our nature with 
our every heart-beat? Nature! she is always lovely, al- 
ways variable; she binds her creatures by no cruel withes 
— it is the Human only who is scourged and lashed for- 
ever by Duty, and the recognition of an invisible God!’ 

The lights faded before her eyes — they could not shine 
through the tears that filled them. She heard steps as- 
cending the stairs, and for a moment her heart leaped, 
and she thought it might be her husband come in search 
of her; but no! it would never occur to him to climb so 
many stairs in search of her — her heart might be breaking 
at the top of them, but he would hesitate and dawdle at 
their foot. 

Berry did not move as the heavy steps approached her, 
but when she got a friendly nudge in the ribs, she turned 
to get a good whiff of Irish stew breathed into her face. 

“ Beg your pardon, mum, but I thought you was 
asleep! There’s a party down-stairs — the one that brings 
you them lots of flowers — but he’s forgot to bring any to- 
day.” 

For a moment or so, Frowzibella thought Mrs. Booth 
had not heard, and she was about to begin again, when 
Berry said: 

“ I will come directly,” and she listened to the heavy 
steps as they clumped themselves out of hearing. 

Then, without even a touch to her hair, with her 
painter’s blouse still on her, and smudges of paint on her 
hands, and cheek, she went swiftly down-stairs and into 
the presence of Hugo Holt. 


90 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER? 


CHAPTER XVI 

Fais ce que you dr as 
Advienne que pourra. 

Perhaps no finer instance of his tact could be shown 
than in the fact that Mr. Holt came empty-handed. The 
room was bare of flowers, but he had brought none. The 
candles were lit. He could see the traces of tears on her 
cheeks as she stood just inside the door that she had shut 
behind her. 

If ever in his brilliant, many-sided life he felt remorse, 
he might have felt it then, as, going nearer to her, he saw 
the frightful alteration that a week had made in her face. 

She looked up at him, not speaking, but, ah! where was 
her anger now? All was forgotten in the overmastering, 
stupendous joy that his presence brought her. Here was 
love, pure love, that will not recognize a fault in what it 
loves, that is blind and deaf and dumb to everything save 
this bodily sense that its beloved is within reach of its 
hand. 

“ Forgive me,” he said, seeing only her pallor and 
stricken look. “ I was mad — only forgive me.” 

She looked at him for a moment, trembling on the verge 
of wild tears. Oh! to sob them out on his shoulder, to 
hide herself in the shadow of his strength, to be the hum- 
blest thing to him, lest he should go away and leave her 
forever! 

“Are you sorry?’ she said, snatching her voice between 
the love and the scorn that racked her; “ or are you proud 
of adding the last insult, the last straw, to the lot of a 
woman who is down in the world, and who has no one to 
defend her?” 

He answered her nothing 

“It is always the way/’ she went on in her low passion- 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 91 

ate voice. “ If a woman forgets herself, ever so little, the 
man punishes her with the whole might of his insolent 
cruelty. I thought you meant to be kind to me — and 1 
have thanked you very often — and all the while you were 
thinking of me as one of those other women to whom you 
are accustomed.” 

“1 am sorry.” he said, doggedly. “ Will you forgive 
me?” 

; If she had known then what issues trembled in the bal- 
ance she would have cried out “ No!” but as it was, with 
her new-born strength stirring, and with the enemy van- 
quished, sad-looking before her, her heart inclined to 
mercy, and involuntarily, though timidly, she put out 
her hand. 

As he took it a shock ran through her, and she turned 
white as snow. 

“ You will be good?” she said, with trembling lips. 

“ Yes.” 

“ And you will never-never kiss me again?” 

He was silent. 

Does a true woman ever make terms with the man she 
loves? When he humbles himself to her, does she not 
forgive him, and by her trust leave more to his honor 
than if she exacted his bond? 

“ I am going away soon,” said Berry, rather irrelevant- 
ly, as she took her hand away; “ but until then — can we 
not be friends?” 

Perhaps he did not answer her, or she did not listen, 
as she sat down and took up her work again at the very 
stitch where she had stopped a week ago. 

“ You have been painting to-day?” he said. 

“ Yes.” 

“ You promised me once that you would let me see you 
at work.” 

“ And so you may,” she said, as indifferently as if he 
had bred no fear in her; “ but not to-day — it is too late.” 


92 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


“ Do you go out of town soon?” he said. 

“In about a week — to Ladisloes.” 

“ You are very fond of Mrs. Cholmondely,” he said. 

“ She is my dearest friend. But she will not be there; 
she is at Madeira with her children, and Mr. Cholmon° 
dely has gone abroad for three months.” 

“ Then why do you go?” he said. 

She lifted the head that was set so beautifully on her 
long, slender throat, and said; 

“ I want change.” 

“ The Essex flats are unhealthy — especially at this time 
of year,” he said; “you will do better to remain in town.” 

“ Are you afraid that I shall send for you?” she said 
bitterly; “pray do not alarm yourself! A thousand 
leagues are nothing to travel for a woman who is out of 
your reach — but a mile is crawled slowly when you know 
that you will find her at the mile’s end.” 

“ I would crawl every step of the way,” he said quietly, 
“if I were sure of finding you at the mile’s end.” 

“ No,” she said, “you would not find me there,” and 
went on working as if he did not exist. 

But she looked up presently to see that he looked tired 
and downcast, like a man who has had a heavy day, and is 
disappointed of his rest at the end of it 

All the anger in her died out, as the woman softened. 

“ Yon are tired,” she said anxiously. “ Have you had 
a very long day?” 

“ It is not over yet,” he said wearily; “ I have two or 
three hours of work before dinner. But I want to hear 
about your plans,” he added, with the unfailing reticence 
concerning self that always distinguished him. 

“And I want to hear about you” she said; “but first 
of all, tell me, how is your little girl?” 

He brightened perceptibly, and to herself she said,, 
quoting Hetty’s words, “Home ties are strongest.” 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


93 


“ She is very well. Some day, perhaps, you will let 
me bring her to see you.” 

“ And your tall boys,” said Berry, slowly. “ I should 
like to see them too. Are they a help to you? are they 
following in your steps?” 

“ Children are a nuisance,” he said abruptly, as he got 
up, and her heart sunk as she saw that he was about to 

go- 

“I shall come and see you on Thursday,” he said, 
naming the next day but one, “and perhaps you will let 
me go and see you at Ladisloes.” 

“Jt is too far,” she said, “and you have not time.” 

“I would go there, or to the world’s end, to see you,” 
he said quietly. 

Then he kissed her little hand, all smudged as it was 
and stained with paint, and she shivered as he did it, re- 
membering all the shame and the outrage of that other 
kiss a week ago. 

But when he had gone she stood looking down on her 
hand, then slowly lifted it to her lips. 

“ Oh!” she cried passionately, exultantly even, “I love 
you now! I love you now!” 


CHAPTER XVII. 

“ Bite hard, lest remembrance come after, 

And press with new lips where you pressed.” 

Edgar Booth had of late developed an odd tetchiness 
of disposition, and was wont to display an unexpected 
anger at any invasion of his privacy. He did not share 
his letters with his wife as formerly, and she observed 
that each night he folded his waistcoat up, and placed it 
under his pillow, so that she knew there was something in 
it which he wished to hide. 

Many a time she might have removed it, and read its 


94 


MURDER OR MASTSLA TIGHTER ? 


contents, but she was too proud; moreover, her own sense 
of wrong-doing against him was too keen to suffer her to 
criticise any lese majeste toward herself. 

He had given consent to their visit to Ladisloes, not to 
please her, but because certain rare old manuscripts in the 
library were, as he thought, essential to his work, and lie 
knew that he could journey up and down comfortably to 
his book-centers, and of course he left his wife out of his 
calculations — as usual. 

When Hugo Holt next called, he found no tears, no 
holland blouse, no smudges of paint, but a perfectly ap- 
pointed, bitter-tongued woman of the world ready to re- 
ceive him. 

Perhaps the knowledge that he loved her restored the 
balance of power: it is well for the world that no two 
lovers love with equal passion at one and the same time! 
And of course she thought, as a woman always does think, 
that she could manage to control the passions she had 
brought into play, and watch them flow peacefully on for- 
ever. I wonder if Circe’s swine ever turned upon and 
rent her? It is in the ignorance of the hand that leads, 
rather than its skill, that safety depends. 

Probably every woman can support herself becomingly 
when she is being made love to, but it is another thing to 
keep a lover at arm’s length, and yet agreeably amuse 
him. 

But if Berry found herself in such a difficulty, she gave 
no sign of it, as she laughed and talked brilliantly; but 
his keen eye noted a subtle change in her — a change that 
he had himself produced — and this was a curious harden- 
ing of her face and manner, and even a touch of reckless- 
ness in her words and voice. She felt ashamed, dishonored; 
something had gone from her that could never come back, 
and she likened herself to a mirror, over which some blight- 
ing breath has been breathed, and is not suffered ever to 
pass away. In this bitter mood she managed to say more 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


95 


than one thing that hurt him, and at last he said quietly: 
“ You do manage to say the unkindest things.” 

“ Are you used to nothing but compliments from my 
sex?” she said, looking at him scornfully; “are all the 
women in love with you who go to see you?” 

“ You can be the sourest, as you can be the sweetest 
woman in the world,” was all the answer he made her. 

“ But of course you can do what you please,” she went 
on; “for you are so respectable — and you would be a 
miserable man without your respectability! You have a 
horror of scandals, you have never been talked about, your 
domestic menage is a model of propriety, and your name 
has never been unlawfully linked with any woman’s — 
though you are nearly forty-six years old.” 

“ Nearly old enough to be your father,” he said coolly. 

“Yes,” she said, her brilliant, scornful eyes seeming 
to flash something even stronger than dislike as she looked 
at him, “ you Scotch are all alike; yon are very cautious, 
very clever, very pious, very immoral; and if, nowadays, 
you drink less than other men, it only makes you all the 
more dangerous.” 

“ I am glad that you do not regard us as entirely harm- 
less,” he said, negligently; but he knew that she was 
speaking truth, though of the hard side of his nature she 
had only a faint idea. 

“You would not be happy in exile or in disgrace,” she 
said; “you would not suffer the greatest passion of your 
life to jeopardize for one moment your position in the 
world, and you have sufficient strength of mind to subor- 
dinate everything to your one object in life — success.” 

“ Yon dissect me very mercilessly,” he said, with that 
slight indrawing of the lips that she knew so well. 

“ I have been studying you,” she said, with a laugh that 
had little mirth in it; and then she got up, trying to quell 
the species of rage that had seized her suddenly as she 
looked at him sitting there, and knew what his errand 


96 MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

was* and how in his soul he had made up his mind to 
succeed. 

He did not ask her to sacrifice anything for him — men 
do not ask such things nowadays — not to go away with 
him, only to love hirn, to be to him what his own wife 
should have been — to be a silent dishonor to her husband, 
unsuspected by either him or the world, and outwardly as 
pure as in the hour when he first met her. She made a 
gesture as if she flung some loathsome thing from her, 
then for a moment she looked at his sleek horses, his 
ponderous coachman, and she muttered aloud the word 
“ Respectable !” as she went back to her place. 

“ You promised me once that I should see you at 
work,” said Mr. Holt; “ will you let me see you to-day?” 

“Why did you do it?” she cried, looking at him with 
lovely, cold eyes, and as if she had not heard him speak. 
“ Why did you undo it all- — all the self-control and the 
gentleness you had shown from the beginning? It was for 
your reticence and your strength, your audacity and your 
courage, that I loved you — you seemed to have in you every 
quality that I most admire in man, and you have spoiled it 
all — and I have lost my friend and you have gained — 
nothing.” 

“You will change,” he said, with stubborn lips set 
hard. “ And so yon will not let me see you work to-day?” 

Her arms fell to her sides, a feeling of powerlessness 
against this man’s iron will for a moment palsied her; then 
her spirit returned, she lifted her head, and scorning to 
show fear of him, she said: “You can come up to my 
attic if you please,” and moved out of the room, and ran 
lightly up the stairs before him. 

She heard him following her up those many steps, but 
her breath was gone, when she reached the door and pushed 
it open. 

The room was bare and plain; no rich stuffs, no books 
or properties, nothing to assist the imagination was there, 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 97 

only an easel, upon which one picture stood, and the bare 
necessaries of her craft. 

He gave one quick look round, then came up to her 
as she took up her palette and brush, and prepared to 
paint. 

“ You have nothing to help you,” he said, and the pain - 
in his voice made it sound bitter; “you are handicapped 
in every way.” 

“ Yes,” she said; “ I have never had a chance.” 

Ignorantly, accidentally even, people said Berry had 
made a hit before she was twenty-one years old. She had 
begun very early in life to paint, and her first exhibited 
picture, though full of crudities and mistakes, had touched 
the public heart; she had made it laugh, and she had 
made it cry. Thenceforth, the more the critics abused 
her, the more the public loved her, and so she had be- 
come famous by the royal right it conferred; and no 
emperor could have been prouder of his finest victories 
than was she of the honor that had been bestowed by the 
masses upon her. 

“ Have you killed him?” said Mr. Holt, with something 
strange in his voice as he stood looking at the picture. 

“ I don’t know. I am not sure if he be only dead — or 
asleep.” 

He drew a deep breath, went back to the door, and 
shut it. 


98 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


PART II. 


“ Tout connaitre, c’est tout pardonner.” 


CHAPTER I. 

AT THE GATES OP DEATH. 

A woman was being tried for the murder of her hus- 
band, and defended by the man for whom she had com- 
mitted the crime. The prisoner was Beryl Booth, the 
man was Hugo Holt. To herself she seemed to have 
reached her highest point of shamelessness and infamy, 
when in open court she looked across at him, and pleaded 
“Not guilty” of the murder to which she had confessed 
in every detail a fortnight ago. 

To outsiders there seemed nothing strange in so cele- 
brated a woman being defended by so eminent a man, 
and as no breath of scandal had ever associated their 
names, the inner horror of the situation was partly visible 
to only one or two persons in court, and in its entirety 
only to one. 

Even the look exchanged by the woman and her de- 
fender, when she was called upon to plead, passed 
unnoticed. Yet what a look was there! what woe and 
determination, what memories, and what a future of no 
hope, mingled in their glance, when, by mere force of 
will, he compelled her to add perjury to her other scarlet 
sins! And the line of defense that it was rumored he in- 
tended to adopt was, in the face of the evidence, and the 
woman’s bodily presence, more flagrantly lying still. 

Mad! Look at her as she stands in the dwindled sun- 
shine of a London criminal court, reason enthroned upon 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


99 


her low, wide brow, judgment firm on her lips, while 
through the downcast lids you seem to see the sweetness of 
the eyes that refuse to shed the tears that weight them, 
and you will say, “ There, to ail appearance, is a woman 
at once strong and tender, spirited yet gentle, adorable 
and good.” Yet a man might as well take a devil to 
his fireside — nay, a devil would show more ruth in his 
crime than she. 

Of Hugo Holt it might have been possible to imagine 
that he would sweep from his path whatever came in his 
way, but in her face there was a failure of hardness — an 
almost excess of softness — you might imagine her to sin 
through stress of pity, or of love, but from deliberate will 
and determination to do wrong — never. 

Yet in cold blood she had committed a murder so 
piteous, so horrible in its circumstances, as to ring from 
one end of the world to the other, and arouse so much 
public attention, that every foot of ground in the court 
was thronged when, early in March, she was brought up 
for trial. 

It had been a brutal, a stupid, and a cowardly crime; one 
worse than that (said the world), for it was so useless! 
If she had only had a little patience, if she had only 
waited, her husband would have died of his own accord, 
but her hurry was too great, and so she must reap the 
gallows. 

He had died, her poor murdered man, loving her, be- 
lieving in her to the last; it had been upon her breast that 
he gasped out his death agony, to her hand that he had 
tjlung when the everlasting darkness had hidden her from 
his eyes. 

That he was far gone in an incurable complaint she 
had not known until after his death, when an autopsy 
was performed upon him; but it was said, that when they 
told her, she made no sign, only said, as she had from the 
beginning, “ I am guilty — let me die!” 


100 MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

To some of the lookers-on, worn-out habitues of old 
sensations, it seemed that there must be a novelty, an 
elan in the feeling of a woman who could not only be so 
passionately loved by the man whom she had undone, 
but, with the stain of blood freshly on her hand, could 
command the open countenance and advocacy of such a 
man as Hugo Holt. 

One or two people shrugged their shoulders and said 
he and she had probably been lovers, and, with the char- 
acteristic daring that occasionally distinguished him, he 
loved her the better for a crime that she thought would 
bring her nearer to himself. 

But both had probably left out of their calculations 
Mrs. Holt, who, good, excellent woman, had no intention 
whatever of departing her pleasant life to oblige her hus- 
band, and was blissfully ignorant that he played any part 
toward Mrs. Booth save that of her advocate. She 
thought it quite natural that a woman who had gone 
down in the world should commit a murder, and equally 
natural that the most famous criminal pleader of the day 
should be called upon to defend her. 

Beryl wore no mourning — why should she affect to 
mourn the life that she had taken? She had on the white 
serge gown in which Hetty had last seen her at Brook 
Street, with bands of dark fur at the throat and wrists, 
and a small, close white bonnet, also edged with fur. She 
looked very young, and curiously innocent, and, save when 
she looked at Hugo Holt, had not once lifted her eyes 
since she was placed in the dock. Her face expressed no 
fear, but rather the intense weariness of a child who is 
made to stand up for a long and difficult punishment, 
and who longs for the moment when she can forget fatigue 
and punishment alike in slumber. It was a face to haunt 
a man’s memory with its sweetness and its sorrow: so 
might a saint, serene in her holy faith, look under the 
dulled agony of a long martyrdom. 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 101 

She neither stirred nor looked up, when the counsel for 
the prosecution rose, nor did she at any time throughout 
his speech manifest any emotion. That speech was brief 
and to the point; he had to deal with facts, not hypothe- 
sis, and his task was simple. 

“Early in January,” he said, “Mr. and Mrs. Booth 
were residing at Ladisloes, in Essex, in the absence of the 
master and mistress of the house, who were then botli 
abroad. Evidence would be brought forward to show that 
Mr. Booth appeared to have fallen at this time into a 
weak state of health, and this weakness seemed to increase 
upon him, though Mrs. Booth did not apparently observe 
it, and was never hcfard to make any remark upon the 
subject. He was a very learned man, and spent the greater 
part of his time over his books, while Mrs. Booth, when 
not painting, was constantly wandering about the grounds. 
There was reason to believe that she was not always un- 
accompanied in these walks, and the evidence of a gardener 
would go far toward establishing a motive for what was 
at first sight only a stupid, senseless crime, and that motive 
was, a profound and reckless passion for a man who was 
not her husband. 

“This person came and went with the strictest privacy, 
and even the gardener could not have sworn to his per- 
sonality, though he overheard a conversation between 
them about the middle of January. With the end of the 
month matters within-doors changed for the worse, and 
Mr. Booth’s illness refused to be any longer ignored. He 
twice or thrice went to London, to consult his medical 
man, and even a doctor visited him, but he still kept to 
his usual habits of life, and would sit among his books 
in his dressing-gown, seemingly quite contented if his 
wife were somewhere near him. It was remarked in these 
last days of his life that the bond between the two seem- 
ed closer and more tender than formerly, and the quiet 
attitude of devotion that he had always shown her was in- 


102 MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

tensified to a fondness that would hardly suffer her out of 
his sight. That at this time she was suffering under 
great stress of mind was pro'ved by the servants, who 
would hear her pacing her room for hours together during 
the night, and often low moans, as of a person in ex- 
tremest agony, would startle those who were passing her 
door. A great change became perceptible in her looks, 
she had the air of a woman haunted by some dreadful 
thought, or the memory of some dreadful deed. One 
morning she rose early, was driven to the station, three 
miles distant, and took the train for town, returning the 
same morning. Within four days of her returning Mr. 
Booth was dead. A servant, entering their room the last 
thing at night with some beef-tea, found Mr. Booth lying 
a corpse on the sofa, and his wife insensible in the arms 
that even in the agonies of death had folded about her. 

“ Tightly clutched in her stiffened hand was a small 
bottle marked ‘ Poison/ and empty. It bore the name 
and address of the chemist from which she had purchased 
it in London four days previously, and on the table be- 
side her was the empty glass from which he had drunk. 
When they brought her to herself she cried out, ‘ Oh! I 
have murdered him!’ and fell upon his body, and im- 
plored him to forgive her for having taken his life. 
When the doctor came she repeated her admissions, and 
had continued to do so until this morning, when it was 
fully expected that she would plead ‘ Guilty 9 to the charge 
against her. That she had not done so was due probably 
to some secret influence that had been brought to bear 
upon her, but its only effect would be to somewhat length- 
en out the trial, which could have but one issue. A more 
cowardly and infamous murder had probably never been 
committed, and the fact that the prisoner was a woman 
well known for her great intellectual powers only made 
the crime the more heinous and unnatural. That the 
man' who was her lover had probably inspired it, or at 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


103 


least had caused her to resolve on removing Mr. Booth 
from her path, was only too likely, and, as an accomplice 
to the deed, it was earnestly to be hoped that he might 
be traced, and brought to justice. Whatever moral share, 
however, he might have in her guilt, the act was clearly 
committed by her hand; and, from the curious evidence 
of a picture painted by her some months ago, it would ap- 
pear that the deed had been long premeditated, and even 
the plea of manslaughter could not be urged upon her be- 
half. The picture in question represented Mr. Booth ly- 
ing dead in his bed, and looking, as the doctor would 
presently witness, exactly as he did after death, and the 
woman who was peeping in through the open door-way, 
witli a devilish exultation in her deed, had been painted 
by Mrs. Booth in the likeness of herself. ‘ Deserted 9 was 
scrawled beneath the canvas — ‘Murdered* would have 
been a truer title.” (The picture was produced, and hand- 
ed up to the judge and jury. More than one man shud- 
dered as he gazed, thinking of his own wife, and look- 
ed with unconquerable loathing at the woman in the 
dock.) 

Mr. Hawksley concluded his speech by pointing out to 
the jury their plain duty to return a verdict of guilty, in 
accordance with the evidence about to be given, which in 
one unbroken chain forged the links of the prisoner’s 
guilt. 

In the moment after he had ceased to speak, and before 
the first witness for the prosecution was called, there was 
for a moment profound silence, suddenly broken by the 
singularly pure, distinct enunciation of a man who spoke 
from the body of the court. 

“ The last time I saw that woman she was playing 
hunt-the-slipper,” he said, and was startled when she 
lifted her eyes and looked full at him; but even as she 
gazed, he and the scene around her faded, her awful sit- 
uation was forgotten, ' and the stain of blood-guiltiness 


104 MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

had faded from her soul and hand — she was gay once 
more, she was innocent, she was happy — and as in a 
lightning flash she saw the jocund game, and herself the 
principal actor in it. The scene fades, the room is silent, 
she is once more in the dock, and Jemmy St. Asaph’s 
voice is still ringing in her ears. She lifts her head, and 
her eyes wander round the court, but she sees one face 
only out of that upturned sea; it is the face of Hetty, 
pale and tear-stained, haggard and worn, looking, as in- 
deed is the case, as if she had traveled night and day to 
be present in court this morning. Then for the first time 
her lips tremble, her head sinks, and two or three heavy 
tears roll slowly down her cheeks. 


CHAPTER II. 

“An orphan’s curse would drag to hell 
A spirit from on high ; 

But, oh! more horrible than that, 

Is the curse in a dead man’s eye.” 

The witnesses for the prosecution were now called, the 
first being the chemist from whom she purchased the poi- 
son. 

He said that she was quite calm and collected when she 
asked for it, stating that she was an artist, and required 
it in the exercise of her art. She gave her full address, 
and references to two people residing in London. The 
dose was sufficient to kill three people, and as it was all 
administered at once, death would ensue almost immedi- 
ately. 

Cross-examined, he said that he thought she looked as 
if she had seen trouble, but had got resigned to it now. 
She seemed in no hurry, and waited patiently for some 
time till he could attend to her. 

The next witness was the servant who had entered the 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


105 


bedroom to find Mr. Booth dead, and Mrs. Booth insensi- 
ble in his arms. The empty bottle of poison was clutched 
in her right hand, and though she tried to unlock her 
fingers, could not do so until prisoner got her senses back, 
when she cried out, “Oh! I have murdered him!” and 
the bottle fell out of her hand to the ground. Had al- 
ways thought Mr. and Mrs. Booth on very good terms till 
she had heard some gossip from Howtyego in the servants’ 
hall, and then they had all been on the lookout more or 
less, to see if any gentleman came on the sly to see her. 

At these last words a look of terror suddenly overspread 
Berry’s face, which had not changed under the evidence 
of her husband’s death, and her own confession. To 
Hetty it seemed as if Berry longed to look at Hugo Holt, 
yet forced her eyes to keep away from him, but he did not 
glance toward her as he continued his cross-examination, 
but without inquiry into what Howtyego had said. He 
seemed to aim principally in shaking the woman’s evidence 
that Mrs. Booth had made use of the words that she 
stated. 

In this he failed, and the next witness, the doctor, who 
had been sent for as soon as Mr. Booth’s death was dis- 
covered, entirely corroborated her story. Mr. Booth had 
been dead about half an hour when he arrived, the cause 
of death being prussic acid, taken in a very large quantity. 
Mrs. Booth was kneeling beside him, her head on his 
shoulder, when witness arrived, and she looked up and 
said, “Do not touch him, I murdered him. He is mine 
now.” He thought then that her words pointed to 
jealousy of some other woman, and that she had murdered 
Mr. Booth for unfaithfulness to her. The police were 
not communicated with that night, the hour being so 
late, but very early next morning they were sent for, and 
he himself remained there all night. 

Cross-examined as to why he had done so, he said, that 
he believed Mrs. Booth meant to commit suicide, and 


10G MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

that, in spite of her crime, he felt so much interest in, 
and pity for her, that he desired to save her from herself. 
So he had watched in the adjoining room all night. Asked 
if he had been awake the whole time, he admitted that 
he might have dozed off a little toward dawn. 

Cross-examined as to whether Mrs. Booth had left her 
room that night, he was forced to confess that, having 
fallen asleep, he could not tell. The servants had all 
gone to bed when Mr. Booth had been laid out in the 
death-chamber, and no one was watching but himself. If 
she had wished to escape, she could have done so, but he 
found her asleep with her head resting on the dead man’s 
hand when he went into the room next morning. At ten 
o’clock she had been removed to prison, and he had never 
seen her since, until to-day. 

The next witness called was a famous surgeon from 
London, who had been summoned to perform an autopsy 
on Mr. Booth. 

He said that the immediate cause of death was prussic 
acid, but that internal evidence showed that Mr. Booth 
was the victim of an incurable disease, which had been 
slowly gaining upon him for years, but had latterly made 
such rapid strides that he could not possibly have lived 
longer than a few months. He must have been aware of 
the disease, from the intense agony it cost him, and have 
known, too, that there was no cure for it, and that his 
sufferings at the last would be frightful. Witness had 
known men deliberately commit suicide rather than 
torture those they loved by letting them witness such un- 
assuageable pangs, and but for the evidence Mrs. Booth 
had furnished against herself, he should have said that her 
husband had himself obtained, and administered the 
poison, and that from a merciful and humane point of 
view he would have done right. 

“ All the men are in her favor,” said one of the female 
fripons present, with a sneer as the witness left the box; 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 107 

“ I shouldn’t wonder if they make her out innocent after 
all!” 

Howtyego was the next witness called, and a quick, 
sudden rustle of prurient curiosity ran round the court; 
here would be such evidence as great ladies love to gather 
from the region of scullions and kitchen-maids, when 
some one of their order figures in the divorce court. 

On Berry’s face was stamped the burning, bitter flush 
of shame. She felt herself like the debased respondent in 
some vulgar divorce case, upon whom her servauts have 
spied, and made disgusting comments, and who have dis- 
torted, perhaps, her most innocent looks and words into 
material for guilt. A sudden sense of all the hopeless 
ruin to which she had brought herself seized her, and who 
but would have envied her a few short months ago? She 
had been proud, she would not humble herself to God, 
and so He had taken everything — and was even about to 
take her life. It is a fearful thing to know that all is 
lost; we may know ourselves in jeopardy, but we always 
think there is a chance of redemption, that we shall pass 
the harbor-bar at last; it is only when we come face to 
face with Finis, written on the last page of the book of 
life, we turn to the world, that we know our doom is irrev- 
ocable as death itself. 

The man Howtyego was a rather sullen, reserved-look- 
ing man, whose evidence had even a greater weight, from 
the absence of interest and animus with which he gave it. 

He said that Mrs. Booth had been in the habit of 
walking a great deal ever since she came to Ladisloes 
in December. Didn’t seem to care much where she 
went, or how often she went over the same track, 
so long as she was on her feet, and often she passed him 
witli her eyes fixed-like, as if she were asleep. One after- 
noon early in February he went into the grape-houses 
when it was almost dark. There was an entrance at either 
end, and when about half-way through the houses, he 


108 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


heard in the one beyond, a sound like a woman weeping, 
and then a man’s voice, and as there was a deal of bur- 
gling about just then, he thought he would listen, in case 
one of the women in the house had got a lover, as like as 
not from Whitechapel. 

He hadn’t listened long before he knew it was a lady — 
Mrs. Booth — and it was a gentleman with a very quiet 
voice who was talking to her. She seemed to be strug- 
gling against him, and he heard her say, “I would kill 
myself afterward — or you.” And then she said, “Some 
day I shall tell him, and murder will come of it — either 
you or him.” He could not swear exactly to whether she 
said, “ It will be you or him.” 

It was too dark to see either of them, but he thought he 
should know the gentleman again by his voice. (Here 
Hetty felt an insane desire to leap up, and, pointing her 
finger at Hugo Holt, shriek out, “Thou art the man!” 
and upon Berry’s face the look of horror grew, and her 
very breath seemed to suspend itself, as she listened for 
the witness’s next words.) He heard little more, because 
he thought they were approaching him, so he slipped awav 
and watched by the entrance till they should come out. 
He waited half an hour, but when he opened the door 
boldly, and went in, the place was empty; they must have 
gone out at the opposite end. He didn’t think much 
about it at the time, but afterward, when Mr. Booth was 
murdered, he thought this man, whoever he was, might 
have put the idea into Mrs. Booth’s head that day. 

Mr. Holt did not cross-examine this witness, for what 
reason probably only two persons in court knew. The 
gardener left the court immediately, with manifest joy at 
his escape. 

This closed the case for the prosecution, and the court 
then adjourned for luncheon. On its return, Hugo Holt’s 
speech would be delivered for the defense. 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


109 


CHAPTER III. 

“ Laugh, and the world laughs with you; 

Weep, and you weep alone; 

For this brave old earth must borrow its mirth ; 

It has troubles enough of its own. 

Sing, and the hills will answer; 

Sigh — it is lost in the air ; 

The echoes bound to a joyful sound, 

But shrink from voicing care.” 

Said one fripon to another, as the court emptied of all 
but mere spectators, 

“ Who was the man?” 

“ Holt himself, very likely.” 

“ Not he! He would have driven down openly. When 
he courts, it is respectably — with his carriage and pair 
waiting outside.” 

“But she used to go and see him often at Lely Place, 
you know. One of the clerks told me so, and how he con- 
trived always to be alone with her for a few minutes. 
But, on the other hand, he told me that she always 
blushed when she saw Holt. Now a woman may blush 
before she goes wrong, but never after.” 

“ She doesn’t give one the idea of a woman who has 
gone wrong. They say she didn’t know till last night 
that any one was to defend her, and that Holt only wrung 
from her the promise to plead 4 Not guilty ’ when she was 
physically worn out by his insistence.” 

“ It won’t help her much. Wonder what line he means 
to take? Insanity won’t wash — manslaughter would be 
safest.” 

“ After all, she didn’t do much harm. She only hur- 
ried the poor devil up a bit, and no doubt, if all the 


110 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


doctors say is true, he was very much obliged to her. A 
pity that women are so .confoundedly impatient.!” 

And they consoled themselves with sherry and sand- 
wiches. Very few persons had left their seats, which 
would have been instantly filled up, for the event of the 
day would be Hugo Holt’s speech, and many bets were 
given and taken as to the line of defense he meant to 
adopt. 

“ He can go to luncheon,” said a lady who sat, some- 
what isolated from the rest at the back of the court; he 
can eat and drink, while she — ” 

A storm of passionate tears choked her utterance; be- 
hind her thick veil she cried for awhile, helplessly, then 
she said, 

“ He is a devil, a fiend — and I wish that his food may 
choice him!” 

The young man in barrister’s wig and gown, who sat 
beside her, listened with a perplexed, but cogitative look 
in his blue eyes. He knew the devoted attachment that 
subsisted between Mrs. Cholmondely and the woman 
who had just left the dock; he had got his own opinions 
about Hugo Holt’s feeling toward Mrs. Booth, and her 
attitude toward him, but the shrewd, brilliant-eyed, 
clever young man could not take the same leap from hy- 
pothesis to certainty that Hetty had cleared at a bound. 

Granted that Berry had got strongly under Hugo Holt’s 
influence, she was yet a woman of determined will, and 
had struggled successfully against him, as witnessed by 
the fact that, through fear of herself, she had left her 
house in his (Poore’s) company on an inclement day, 
rather than meet the man whom she admired. 

“What .can- be his influence over her?” cried Hetty, 
almost beside herself with grief, fatigue, and fasting, 
and remembering only that this safe, steady young 
man had become an intimate friend during that happy, 
bright Christmas at Ladisloes— “ a plain, dark, satur- 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? Ill 

nine man, who cares for nothing but money and suc- 
cess, and who will step over her dishonored grave with- 
out a pang. Oh! it is impossible that she should alter so 
in so short a time. Was ever the course of guilt so 
quick, so frightfully quick as this? Only a few months 
ago she was a girl, laughing and playing, as frolicsome, 
as pure of heart as one of my Children, and do you mean 
to say that she could run the whole scale of crime with 
such fearful rapidity? Oh! you did not know her — the 
gentlest, the sweetest, the most humane soul, I used al- 
w ays to think that verse applied to her so exactly, 

“‘He prayeth best who lovetk best 
All things both great and small’ 

for she loved everything; she was good to everybody, the 
weak and the poor especially, and her life was one perpet- 
ual forgetting of self.” 

Llewellyn Poore nodded slowly, his dark brows meeting 
almost in a line across his forehead. 

“ Was she at all passionate in anger?” 

“ Yes — but very rarely.” 

“Then Holt will do best to plead the crime as one of 
manslaughter only.” 

“ You think that she did it?” cried Hetty,, recoiling 
from him in horror. 

“Undoubtedly. But I believe she was practically in- 
sane at the time.” 

“Or under the influence of another will. He had al- 
ways that influence over her— it must be what men call 
das Ddmonisclie ; nothing else could account for his over- 
throwing, in so short a time, a woman at once so pure and 
so proud, with such will and strength of character as 
Beryl Booth.” 

“ He would not be likely to counsel her to such a crime,” 
said Llewellyn Poore; “anything so clumsy and useless 
would not be in his line.” 


112 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER? 


“ You have a bad opinion of him,” said Hetty, swiftly, 
and putting her hand on his; “ now promise me this — 
help me to find out the truth about this business, and. be- 
tween us we will save her.” 

He shook his head. 

“She will be condemned,” he said, “the verdict is a 
foregone conclusion. The utmost we could do would be 
to make out extenuating circumstances, and memorialize 
the Home Secretary, for I am much mistaken if the jury 
recommend her to mercy.” 

Hetty withdrew her hand, groaning. Her sweet, pretty 
face was all disfigured with tears and dust, her fair hair 
was all pushed back in disorder from her brow. It was 
at Nice that she heard of Mr. Booth’s murder and Berry’s 
arrest, and without waiting for her husband, whom she 
had gone to meet, she had set off for England without 
even a change of clothes, or closing her eyes on the way, 
At the very door of the court she had met Llewellyn 
Poore, who had squeezed in with her, and actually ob- 
tained for her a seat. 

“There is something behind it all,” she said; “no 
matter how appearances are against her, she is not guilty. 
Can you look in her face, and believe it? But all the 
same she' is resolved to die — perhaps for some fault against 
her husband that she has exaggerated into a crime — per- 
haps because she would rather die than suffer Hugo Holt’s 
influence any longer.” 

“You are prejudiced against him,” said Llewellyn 
Poore, slowly; “ he bears an unblemished character as a 
man of honor, and is known to be a kind husband, a de- 
voted father, and a stanch friend to those whom he 
likes; that he can hate his enemies as heartily as they 
hate him, and show it, too, is only another point in his 
favor. ” 

“ Yes,” said Hetty, bitterly, “ his influence seems only, 
to be malign, sinister, where my little Berry is concerned. 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 113 

But don’t forget that she set herself up against his will, 
and he is a man who never permits his will to be crossed 
without punishment. I knew that she saw him several 
times in town late last year, and, though she said little, 
yet I could read, between the lines of her letters, the fear- 
ful conflict that was going on in her mind. Then she 
went to Ladisloes, and wrote to me regularly, but all 
struggle in her seemed to be over; a dead level of peace, 
or, rather, depression, had been reached, in which the 
active faculty of pain seemed to be in abeyance. If she 
did not appear to attach much importance to Mr. Booth’s 
increasing weakness, I think it was because she was firmly 
convinced in her mind that she would shortly die herself, 
and so, for the time, her attention was more morbidly 
fixed on her own health than on Ins. But why am I tell- 
ing you all this? I am betraying her confidence, and, of 
course, you can’t understand — you do not know and love 
her, as I do!” 

And Hetty laid her head on the back of the bench be- 
fore her, and wept. 

The young man was silent. To his legal brain the 
affair was a psychological problem with which he longed 
to grapple, but he must have time in which to think it 
out, and his nature was too thorough to attempt to give 
Mrs. Cholmondely comfort at the expense of truth. 

“I know what people say,” went on Hetty, dabbing her 
eyes through her veil, and leaving little black smudges 
everywhere, “ that she could not support her altered cir- 
cumstances, and that the loss of her house, of society, of 
everything to which she was used, drove her into a low 
state of depression, in which it became a toss-up whether 
she took her own life or Mr. Booth’s. But it was not so; 
she had too much strength of mind to break her heart for 
a few tables and chairs, and a lot of luncheons and din- 
ners. It is that man ” — and Hetty shook her little fist at 
Mr. Holt’s vacant place — “ who has ruined her.” 


114 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


“ But it was not to his advantage to do so/’ said 
Llewellyn Poore, “and his appearing on her behalf to- 
day, when he knows that the verdict is a foregone conclu- 
sion, is distinctly in his favor as an honorable man, and 
a man of courage.” 

“ He can be as daring as he is unscrupulous,” said Het- 
ty, with bitter scorn; “a man must be pretty sure of his 
position before he can do the things that Hugo Holt does 
with impunity; of course he loves her in his selfish way, 
but remember this, that, save myself — and you, to whom 
I am revealing everything— not a soul is aware that there 
has ever been anything between them. But can’t you 
see,” she went on, restlessly, “ how unlikely it was, that, 
knowing her husband to be dying, she should have de- 
liberately killed him?” 

“ But did she know it?” said Mr. Poore, looking ear- 
nestly at Hetty. “ To you, as her dearest friend, she 
would naturally write such dreadful news about her hus- 
band at once.” 

“She — she did not,” said Hetty falteringly; “but he 
had a hatred of illness, or of any one supposing that he was 
ill. But in her last letter to me, she said that he was 
anxious to return to town, and that they would leave in 
a few days. The next news I got of them was the awful 
news I got at Nice.” 

“ Her last letter was written after the date fixed by 
Howtyego for the interview he partly overheard?” 

“ Yes.” 

“Then clearly she felt herself safer in town than at 
Ladisloes, and probably the murder was undetermined on 
when she wrote to you. Therefore the theory of the 
picture fails.” 

“The picture!” cried Hetty in strong disdain; “you 
have seen him, you know what Mr. Booth was — a sort of 
sarcophagus set up on end, and never fit to be seen unless 
she had brushed and pulled him into shape — a perpetual 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


115 


worry and blister to her, and so intensely selfish that he 
never even argued about it — he was born so, and couldn’t 
help it! Her bright spirit chafed perpetually against the 
dull one to which she was chained, and into which she 
could not strike a spark of life; but she was so loyal that 
she would never admit it. And her life for eight years 
has been a complete sacrifice to his. Most women would 
have left him, but Berry — ” 

Hetty’s voice ended in a faint sob that told of inanition 
as well as grief, and Llewellyn Poore, touched with com- 
punction, sprung up. 

‘‘You have had no luncheon,” he said, and then she 
was alone for a little while, in which her thoughts flew 
now to Hugo Holt, cold and indifferent as he stood the 
legal chaff of his brethren on his espousal of a lost cause, 
and again to Berry, who, somewhere out of sight, possibly 
ate and drank of a different wine and bread from his. 

But when Mr. Poore returned it was to bring her some- 
thing better than food, for a whisper had gone forth that 
Mr. Holt’s defense would be something entirely original 
and altogether different from what had been expected, and 
that he had as good as staked his reputation on the pris- 
oner’s leaving the court a free woman. 


CHAPTER IV. 

“ In all seemed guilt, remorse, or woe, 

My own and others still the same, 

Life-stifling fear, soul stifling-shame.” 

When Hugo Holt rose to address the jury for the de- 
fense, the question. Murder, or Manslaughter? seemed to 
shape itself on the air. If he could persuade these men 
that she committed the deed in a moment of passion, 
there might be a chance yet for her life— or such a mock- 
ery of life as Justice permits when she spares it. 


116 MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

Probably the moment was an unique one, even in the 
varied history of a Hugo Holt. For here was a man ris- 
ing to defend a woman whom he knew to be guilty of a 
crime, directly or indirectly caused by himself, and from 
the consequences of which (far from blaming her) he 
meant to save her, if it were within the power of man 
that she should be saved. That he was saving her for 
himself, because beloved her with a passion that nothing 
on earth could break, and no infamy of hers make less, 
was known only to two persons in court, the woman in 
the dock, and the woman by the side of Llewellyn Poore. 

But would she suffer herself to be saved? That was the 
question he asked himself, as for a brief moment the 
eyes of defender and defended met, and blindly ignorant 
as she was of what line he meant to adopt, her lips seemed 
to say — 

“When you have spoken, I too will speak — and. I will 
speak the truth.” 

Never, however, had Mr. Holt made a dryer, or less 
ornate speech. He wasted no time in self-commiseration 
for the difficult task imposed upon him, or in a maudlin 
appeal to the jury, but said plainly that the case ought 
never to have come into court for trial at all, for that it 
was one for a coroner’s inquest only. Mr. Booth was a 
man of studious and sedentary pursuits, which probably 
paved the way for the mortal disease with which he was 
at last afflicted, and had probably been aware of, for some 
time before he told his wife of his danger. He was a man 
who had a morbid and excessive horror of pain, and been 
known to argue boldly that when a disease had become in- 
curable, and must entail frightful agony on the sufferer, 
and those who loved him, that it was no crime to take 
the life that could only linger out to a miserable close. 
When, therefore, he found his tortures unbearable, he 
resolved to end them, and being unable to leave the house, 
he sent his wife to London for the poison, and, four days 


MURDER OR 31ANSLAUGHTER ? 117 

later, deliberately took it. How natural for her to ex- 
claim, “ I have murdered him!” when she found him 
slain by the instrument that she herself hadplaced in his 
hand. How impossible for a tender-hearted woman to 
realize that he was better so, and that all her love and 
care could never have given him the release from agony 
that she had brought him! That his act was a cowardly, 
a selfish one, could not be denied, but he had probably 
never given a thought to the possibility of his wife being 
accused of his murder. 

Here Berry, who had seemed to pass from a state of 
death to a living thing of fear and horror, cried out with 
blazing eyes: 

“ He is pleading to a lie! My husband never asked me 
to buy it — he was no coward, to die and leave his wife 
to be punished for his sin!” 

But even as the last words were spoken, unconscious- 
ness spread its veil over her face, she sunk forward with 
her head upon the rail; and Hugo Holt went on speaking 
as if she were not present. 

“ How great was the love that subsisted between hus- 
band and wife, unexpected proof had just been given; she 
could not bear even the smallest slur to rest on his memo- 
ry, and as she had sacrificed herself during his life-time 
to his pursuits, so she now deliberately sacrificed her life, 
rather than accuse him of the crime of self-murder. One 
could imagine the long and fearful struggle that went 
forward in her mind before she could bring herself to do 
his bidding, and how, overcome at last by the sight of his 
suffering, she obeyed him, but with the noble resolve that 
though she gave him release, it should be at the cost of 
her own life. As to the evidence of the picture, that 
might be dismissed as altogether absurd. Artists and 
novel-writers of necessity drew largely on their imaginative 
powers, though they often introduced faces and shapes 
familiar to them, and the picture was a fancy one only, 


118 MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

and painted long before Mrs. Booth had any idea of her 
husband’s desperate state of health. When she became 
aware of it — as she did many weeks before his suicide — 
was it in the least likely that she should resolve on im- 
periling her life by a crime that she knew to be absolutely 
useless and unnecessary? He could bring, if he wished it, 
a thousand witnesses to the gentle, sweet, humane char- 
acter she bore, but he would call none, and preferred to 
point to the best and most speaking witness in her favor 
— her own face.” 

Mr. Holt lifted his hand as he spoke, and every eye was 
turned upon Berry, who had raised herself, and stood 
trembling but erect before the court. 

“As to the evidence of the man Howtyego, it was al- 
together unworthy of credence. He could swear only to 
two voices, that might have belonged to any woman or 
man in the house or neighborhood. Ladislces-jvas a vast 
place, and persons had repeatedly been found wandering 
about the grounds; and in the absence of its master and 
mistress it was highly probable that it should be used for 
clandestine intrigues. That the two whom Howtyego 
overheard did not belong to the house, seemed proved by 
the fact that they left the grapery by the exit that gave on 
to the park, and to a tract of walks and avenues beyond, 
commonly used by the surrounding villagers, and known 
as the ‘ Lovers’ Walk.’ 

“ Lastly, he submitted that there was not a tittle or scrap 
of evidence that could convict her of murder, and that 
even of moral guilt in obeying her husband’s commands, 
she was, in the face of his incurable disease, innocent. 
And finally, he called upon the jury to acquit this much- 
tried and gentle woman of a crime that the whole history 
of her blameless and noble life declared to be impossi- 
ble.” 

As he ceased to speak, a low murmur of astonishment, 
of admiration at his daring, spread through the air; but 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER? 119 

it was checked as Berry, moving both hands forward as if 
in entreaty, opened her lips to address the Court. 

It said something for Hugo Holt’s courage and self- 
control, that in the very moment when name, honor, 
home, position, and reputation trembled in the balance, 
he sought neither by look or word to avert what was com- 
ing, but stood silently awaiting her speech. 

“ Gentlemen,” she said, and oh! how sweet and young 
her voice sounded, and how sweet was the pale face that 
she lifted! — “ my kind friend has pleaded for me accord- 
ing to the best of his belief, but in ignorance; he has 
pleaded what is not true. I bought the poison deliber- 
ately, and without my husband’s knowledge, and I meant 
to take a human life with it. And the evidence of How- 
tyego ” — she paused and pressed her hand, against her 
heart — “is true. I was the woman, and my sin is doubly 
great. And I thank yon for the mercy that may have 
been in your hearts toward me; but now all I pray of you 
is, that you will condemn me quickly, that soon my death 
may in part expiate my sins.” 


CHAPTER Y. 

“ A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear, 

A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, 

Which finds no natural outlet, no relief 
In word, or sigh, or tear.” 

All was over now, the excitement, the hubbub, the re- 
len tings of twelve honest men, and the verdict of “ Guilty ” 
had been returned. 

Then, and then only, Berry looked at her defender. 
No guilty woman could have gazed so — it was the look of 
a poor woman who loves, but who has renounced her love; 
of one who has endured, who has suffered all for its sake, 
yet in its very cessation permits it to surmount and beat 


120 MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

down all — as if, having reached its highest point of suf- 
fering and expression, it must speak, and would, in the 
face of death. So might Saint Agnes have looked when 
she said: 

“ The furnace grows cold about me, the flame is divided 
asunder, and its heat is rolled back on them that quick- 
ened it.” 

His look to her expressed nothing, and, indeed, he ap- 
parently accepted the situation with his usual coolness 
and aplomb. He had tried to save her, and she would 
not be saved; but that, having made a fool of him, she 
should cast a look of adoring gratitude on him was quite in 
the ordinary way of a woman — or so thought the crowd, 
who had looked agape at the unexpected denouement . 

The prisoner had disappeared, the judge had vanished, 
soon the court was nearly empty, save for a woman, who 
wept with her hdad on a bench before her, and a young 
barrister, who sat beside her. 

“Can I see her?” she said presently, and, after a long 
while, a time that seemed interminable, and after sur- 
mounting' endless difficulties, Hetty found herself on the 
way to Berry’s cell. 

She shuddered at all these precautions to shut in a poor 
little trembling criminal! But when she found Berry, it 
was to find her fast asleep. She looked like a child who 
had sunk into a long, long rest, forgetful of the God in 
whose presence she would shortly have to appear, answer- 
ing to the commandments that she had broken. 

Hetty endured the silence so long as she was able; then 
she put her arms round the sleeping figure and cried, 
“Berry, Berry!” in a voice of anguish that woke her. 
Berry stirred, with no movement of horror or fear, and a 
smile was on her face as her eyes opened, and she recog- 
nized Hetty. 

Then she tried to slip away, to escape out of her grasp, 
as if she were ashamed, and not worthy to be within it. 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 121 

.“Oh! my dear, my dear,” cried Hetty, “I know it 
all — you are as pure and as good now as when we talked 
together at Ladisloes, and you got the poison because he 
bade you, and you are too loyal to own it.” 

“No,” said Berry, as the happiness that sleep had 
brought her, faded out of her eyes, “ I got it of my own 
accord — and I poured it out into a glass — and he drank it 
and died. I have been a wicked woman, and you need 
not pity me.” 

“ There is something behind it all,” said Hetty, slowly 
and stubbornly, “ and I will find it out. You neither killed 
your husband, nor dishonored him.” 

A look of terror overspread Berry’s features. 

“ Try to find out nothing,” she said; “ and if you ever 
loved me, let things be as they are. I hid something at 
Ladisloes,” she went on swiftly, “on the night he died T 
Swear to me that, if you find it, you will destroy it un- 
read.” 

“No,” said Hetty, “I will not swear it. Whether it 
be a diary, or a confession, I will read it — and you, shall 
be saved in spite of yourself.” 

“ Saved!” cried Berry, almost fiercely, “and for what? 
My husband dead, and I left at the mercy of my heart, 
and the man who loves me? To die is easier, and less sin- 
ful. Don’t try to hinder me,” she said, laying her pale 
cheek against Hetty’s, “I am so tired, and I shall be so 
glad for it all to be over. 1 did not know that he was go- 
ing to plead for me till last night. I meant to say 
‘ Guilty,’ but he wrung, he forced from me the promise 
that I would not plead that. He would have done better 
to let me have my own will, for I only shamed him in 
open court to-day.” 

“I wish you had shamed him more,” said Hetty, bit- 
terly; “ I wish you had said he was the man in the grape- 
house, and torn his mantle of respectability from his back.” 

“ Do not blame him,” said Berry, “ it is always the 


122 MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

woman’s fault — and the fault is mine. And now, good- 
bye, my dear, my dearest friend,” she said, as the key 
turned in the lock, and announced another visitor. 

“ We shall meet again,” said Hetty, as she clung for a 
moment to the tall, slender shape that bore itself so 
bravely; then, on the threshold as she went out, she met 
Hugo Holt coming in. 


CHAPTER VI. 

“ And bring me word what tiling it is 
That women most desire.” 

Society was asking, “Who is the man?” for at least 
three days after the trial. Many women bore Berry a 
grudge, because she had dressed in such a way that no one 
would have suspected her of brains; because she had always 
attracted the best men to her wherever she appeared; and, 
lastly, because she had held herself supremely aloof from 
the mere shadow of a flirtation, displaying a certain inso- 
lence of virtue that had enraged the less immaculate of 
her acquaintance. 

But nobody could discover the man. In public, she had 
never distinguished one more than another. Nor had she 
ever lit a bale-fire by which to warm her hearth, and her 
servants in Brook Street, and the landlady and the serv- 
ant where she had lodged, could have not said a word to 
her discredit. At Ladisloes only the mystic love seemed 
to have sprung suddenly into life, to disappear as swiftly, 
leaving no trace behind. 

“ I always thought she was a deep little woman,” said 
Jemmy St. Asaph, who felt himself an authority in the 
business, remembering how he had thumped her slipper 
on the floor one Christmas night, “and you know it’s 
nearly always the dark horse that wins!” 

Those persons who had pronounced her works immoral 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


123 


because they directly appealed to the feelings, considered 
it a matter of no wonder that she had taken to murder — 
and worse — at last! But there were thousands who sin- 
cerely grieved for her, and would have saved her, if their 
piteous appeals to the Home Secretary could have done 
so; but out of her own month she was condemned, and 
with such circumstantial evidence to back it, no pardon 
was possible. 

Mrs. Hugo Holt rarely reads the papers, and never those 
cases in which her husband was concerned. She reduced 
all his triumphs to certain net results of money, and was 
the double of Lady Scott, who, looking at her faded car- 
pets, said, “Oh! I must get Sir Walter to write some of 
his nonsense books, and then I can buy new ones!” 

Thus Mrs. Holt never thought of Berry’s ruin, and cer- 
tainly in no sense associated it with her husband. He be- 
haved exactly as usual: was at her service to dine out with 
her occasionally, to take her to whimsical entertainments 
by chartered fools, and to first nights at a play, where his 
presence gave a cachet to the proceedings. But I think 
that when the music was sweetest, and the lights were 
brightest, when he looked round and saw not a woman in 
the company who could match her, he thought of Berry. 

At Lely Place his manner showed no change. To some 
of his clients he was curt, to others courteous, but to all 
he gave his time without reserve, and his whole attention 
without stint. To some sarcastic, and some malicioi s 
comments on th q fiasco of the Booth trial, he opposed a 
reserve of manner that ended in making people think 
that he knew a great deal more than he chose to say; and 
there were those who believed that he held some trump 
card that he meant to produce at last, and save ber. 

But these expectations dwindled as the month went bv, 
and the day of Berry’s execution rapidly approached. 
Gradually, too, as it became known that she had steadily 
refused to see Hugo Holt since the day she was con- 


124 MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER? 

demned, all hope for her died away, and people blamed 
and pitied her according to their knowledge of her life, 
or their detestation of her crimes. 

One afternoon in the New Law Courts, two men, mov- 
ing rapidly in opposite directions, collided, and their knees 
knocked together. As they muttered apologies, they 
looked at each other, then the elder man accosted the 
younger. 

“I met you at Ladisloes,” he said, “and you were a 
great friend of Mrs. Booth.” 

“I had the honor of Mrs. Booth’s acquaintance,” said 
Mr. Llewellyn Poore; “ 1 wish that I might claim the 
honor of being her friend.” 

“Why?’ 

“ Because then I might persuade her to tell me the 
truth about her husband’s death.” 

“ What is the truth?” 

“I think,” said the young man deliberately, drawing 
his dark brows in a line across his blue eyes, “ that she 
dreamed that she gave the poison to her husband, having 
bought it without any homicidal design. She told me 
once that she thought she had a dual existence, in which 
the one half of her did not know what the other half 
committed; and I believe that your hypothesis was right 
— that Booth found the poison at hand, and took it. 
For some reason ” (and here the eyes of the two men met), 
“she did not wish to live, and preferred to escape life, 
though without the crime of self-murder; and I believe 
the evidence of it is at Ladisloes.” 

For a moment the man who was on the highest rung of 
the ladder looked at the young one who had with diffi- 
culty climbed a few steps of it. 

“Thank you,” he said, “you have given me a clew;” 
and he passed on. 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


125 


CHAPTER VII. 

“Though all the fierce and drunken passions wove 
A dance more wild than e’er was maniac’s dream; 

Ye storms, that round the dawning east assembled, 

The sun was rising though ye hid his light!” 

When Hetty had once crossed the threshold across 
which Mr. Booth’s murdered body had been carried, and 
Berry had been led forth to prison, she wandered about 
the place ceaselessly like a ghost, who always seeks but 
never finds. 

The day fixed for Berry’s execution was very near, and 
she seemed in haste to meet it, with no fear whatever of 
the beyond to which she was hurrying. “Ned will be 
there,” she said once, and those who heard her thought 
her mad or delirious; for how could she expect her victim 
to meet her gladly, to stretch out a gentle hand of wel- 
come to her across the gulf she had dug between them? 

The servants’ evidence at Ladisloes was not in her fa- 
vor. All agreed that though she did not neglect him, she 
seemed to be secretly afraid of him, and would watch him 
when he was not observing her; and more than once had 
been seen peeping in on him as he sat lost in study, as if 
she feared, yet longed, to approach him. But he was so 
preoccupied that he never seemed to notice her change of 
manner, but showed entire devotion to her always. 

The evidence of Howtyego was not to be shaken, and 
other evidence, was furnished that hinted at more frequent 
visits on the part of Mrs. Booth’s unknown lover than 
had been suspected at the trial. 

Hetty groaned in spirit at the light estimation in which 
the woman whom she had deemed the purest and bright- 
est in the world was held; and she hated Hugo Holt more 
violently than ever. 


126 MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

One night a strange thing happened. 

She had gone to bed, but could not sleep, and rising 
about dawn, crossed the corridor and went into the room 
where Mr, Booth had died. It was the same one that 
Berry and he had occupied at Christmas, and from which 
she had come one night in terror, imploring Hetty to save 
her from herself. 

Had she been dreaming in her sleep of what was to 
come after? 

And so now, Hetty, thinking of her friend and looking 
out through the window, and over the grass a little 
whitened with snow (although in March), and with the 
moon shining brightly over all, saw something glide 
through the gate- way, and so through it to the house door, 
and when arrived there, it halted, and looked up, saw her 
standing at the window above, her masses of yellow hair 
disheveled about her, her eyes fixed on him in a cold stare 
of dread and fear and wonder. 

She never doubted that this was a supernatural visitant 
come to tell her of Berry’s death, as slowly it raised a 
finger, and beckoned to her: she saw the eyes and the 
finger beckoning her as she passed down the staircase, as 
she unbarred the great door and flung it wide. The chill 
wind rushed up to meet her; blowing her night-dress about 
beneath the velvet cloak huddled above it. 

“ I have come to you to help me,” a voice said; and 
then she knew that the visitor was Hugo Holt. 

“Come in,” she said curtly; and he followed her across 
the hall, and waited outside while she lit candles in the 
study; and then he came in, and sat down at a little dis- 
tance from her. 

“ You love her,” he said abruptly; “ she told me once 
that there were no secrets between you. I managed to 
leave town to-night, my carriage broke down, and I have 
been detained nearly two hours on the road, I meant to 
ask your hospitality for a few hours for her sake. But 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 127 

now, if you will answer me a few questions. I will with- 
draw from my unseemly intrusion on your rest.” 

Something worn, weary, in the dark face of the man, 
touched Hetty in spite of herself, and the hardness of her 
look lessened. 

“ You were her friend,” he said; “ she told you more 
than she told any one else in the world. Did- she ever 
say one word to you throwing any light on the circum- 
stances of Mr. Booth’s death?” 

Then Hetty’s face hardened again. Was he not the 
cause of the tragedy? And he could dare to come here 
to question her about it. 

“Did you not put the idea into her head?” she said, 
bitterly. “ It is ill to ask how the slave has carried out 
the directions of his master!” 

“ It is she who has been master, I who have been slave 
throughout,” he said, quietly. “ Mrs. Booth has never 
been under my influence to the extent that I have been 
under hers. She is a pure, good, and true woman, whom 
I shall respect and love to the last beat of my heart.” 

“Yet you have spoiled her life, you have brought her 
to the gallows!” cried Hetty, wildly. “If you had only 
loved and respected her less , she might be a free and a 
happy woman now.” 

“I hope she may be a free and a happy woman yet,” he 
said. “She has no sin with which to reproach herself, 
and that her husband killed himself is morally certain.” 

“ How long have you been sure of that?” said Hetty, 
quickly. 

“When I defended her,” he said, slowly, “I believed 
her to be guilty, and the defense I set up was a purely 
imaginary one. But from words that she let drop, though 
she admitted nothing, on the occasion of my interview 
when I met you coming out of the cell, I am certain that 
on her behalf I was actually pleading the truth. But I 
could wring nothing from her. So, as a last resource, I 


128 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


have come to you to-night, for I am convinced that she is 
hiding, or has hidden, some evidence concerning her hus- 
band’s death, and that the evidence is to be found here” 

The light of the candle fell full on his dark Kembrandt- 
like face. Through the open door could be seen the sil- 
ver gleams that fell from above on the oak staircase. A 
curious sense of unreality, of sleep-walking suddenly over- 
came Hetty, and at the same moment gave her the clew for 
which her mind had been groping during the past week. 

“She walked in her sleep,” she said, slowly. “She 
came to my door one night, and woke up, and found her- 
self there, and she told me in her cell that she had hidden 
something here, and that if I found it I was to burn it 
unread, and I would not promise her. But I have looked 
everywhere,” she added, sadly. “I can think of no new 
place in which to search.” 

“ Whatever she hid before the night of his death would 
be of little value,” said Mr. Holt, whose brows were bent 
together in intense thought. “ Stay!” he added suddenly; 
“ Is not this house said to be haunted?” 

“ Yes. Why do you ask?” 

“ Every one knows the reputation of Ladisloes, and on 
the night of Mr. Booth’s death did either a ghost or 
something else appear abroad? In the evidence, the doctor 
who was supposed to be keeping watch over Mrs. Booth, 
said he would not swear that she had not left the death - 
chamber that night.” 

Hetty sat staring at Mr. Holt, her eyes grew fixed, un- 
consciously she put up one hand, and pushed her hair 
back as if to assist her struggle to remember something 
that had escaped her. 

“ The women said the ghost walked here that night,” 
she said, in a hollow, strange voice; “ and when before, 
they said it walked, and one of the women actually heard 
it speak, Berry was here — it may have been Berry herself, 
and she may have gone to the same room a second time, 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 129 

drawn thither by a curious association of ideas. Let us go 
and see,” she cried, starting up and seizing the candle- 
stick, and was gone so quickly that his usually sedate 
footsteps had to hurry themselves after her flying ones. 

Across the hall, up a winding staircase where glints of 
silver shone here and there on brass, or shield, or picture, 
he followed her until they emerged upon a square landing 
out of which rooms opened irregularly, and up the steps 
of one of these she ran, and pushed open the door. 

“ One of the maids used to sleep here,” she said; “ but 
after being twice frightened she begged for another room, 
and got it.” 

She jumped upon the mattress as she spoke, and hold- 
ing the candle above her head, felt with trembling fingers 
for the spring in the wall that concealed the secret cup- 
board. 

The narrow door of it swung back, and she thrust her 
right arm into the interior with a cry of impatient eager- 
ness, that ended in one of joy as her hand struck against 
a roll of papers, upon which she seized. 

“Here, take the candle!” she cried, thrusting it into 
Mr. Holt’s hand, and with trembling fingers she began to 
untie the ribbon that bound the papers together. “ It is a 
diary,” she said, as she pressed out the sheets, “ and there 
is a paper — see — in Edgar Booth’s handwriting.” 

“ She is saved,” said Mr. Holt, in a triumphant, pas- 
sionate voice that startled her; “ it is Mr. Booth’s confes- 
sion, and here” — he struck with his forefinger a corner of 
the page, “ is the signature of a witness, Jane Dowse.” 

“I had a kitchen-maid of that name,” exclaimed Hetty. 

“ She left the day after Mr. Booth’s death — I remem- 
ber the date so easily because Frobig, my cook, wrote me 
that the girl seemed quite unhinged in mind after the 
catastrophe, and asked to be allowed to go home. But 
let us read it. Oh! Berry! Berry!” and down she sunk on 
the edge of the bed and wept aloud for very joy. 


130 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


Now Chummy, who had awakened to find his consort 
missing, had, quite unlike the fashion of most husbands, 
taken the trouble to get up and go and look for her, and 
on peeping th rough the balustrade, had been somewhat 
taken aback at seeing her looking very like Ophelia, en- 
tertaining a man in his study. 

He could not hear what they said, but, after getting 
into a dressing-gown, he had descended, and followed 
them at a safe distance upon their journey upstairs, won- 
dering what this new prank of Hetty’s might be, but with 
no feelings of jealousy whatever burning in his manly 
bosom. 

So that when he appeared at the open door-way, it was 
to discover his wife in tears, and Mr. Holt in the act of 
transferring to his breast-pocket what looked like a slen- 
der roll of paper. 

Hetty heard the steps and opened her drowned eyes to 
effect an introduction. 

“ Chummy,” she said, “ it is Mr. Holt; he was delayed 
on his way down, and I opened the door and let him in; 
and we have been looking for something we thought Berry 
might have hidden, and — we ha ve found it!” 

Chummy nodded, and looked happy. 

“ Shall I read it?” said Mr. Holt, and then Hetty saw 
that he had a single sheet of paper only in his hand, and 
she cried out: 

“ Where is the diary?” 

“ That belongs to Mrs. Booth,” he said. 

“But you will read it?” cried Hetty, jealously, and in 
a moment all her hatred and fear of the man returned, 
and she marveled that he could have held her under his 
spell, and compelled her to do his bidding during the past 
hour. 

“ I will read you Mr. Booth’s confession,” he said, and 
began at once. 

It was dated on the night of his death, and ran thus: 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


131 


“ I am dying, and by my own hand. Half an hour ago I went 
into my wife’s studio. She was not there, but on the table stood a 
bottle of prussic acid. An overmastering temptation to end the 
agonies I have lately endured overcame me. I carried the poison 
down to my bedroom, resolved that if my wife were not there I 
would take it. She was not there. I set the bottle on the table, 
and waited. Presently a step passed the door. I called out, asking 
who it was, and soon a stupid, idiotic face appeared in the 
doorway. I bade the woman come in. She came slowly, and 
I then told her to sit down, and wait. She did so, just inside the 
door. She is sitting there now, as I write these lines. 

******* 

“ I wish to save my wife, the only woman whom I have ever 
loved in the world, the sight of my last hideous agonies from a 
disease that I know to be incurable. I am about to drink the poison 
in the presence of the woman who will witness this document. 
******* 

“ I have swallowed it. She has witnessed this paper, not having 
read a line of it. I have only now to sign this, and address it to my 
wife.” 

His signature was firm, and beneath it appeared, in 
laborious pot-hooks and hangers, the name of Jane Dowse. 

While Mr. Holt was reading, sundry sounds of substan- 
tial ghosts moving about were heard, and, beyond the 
narrow circle of light made by the candle, dim faces might 
have been perceived peeping in at the door, while faint 
whispers stole abroad upon the air. 

Hetty caught sight of one of those shadowy outlines, 
and beckoned it forward. 

“Frobig!” she cried, “you remember Jane Dowse; 
did you know that she witnessed any paper for Mr. Booth 
the night he died?” 

Frobig’s modest voice alone answered the summons. 

“No, ma’am,” she said; “but after going upstairs that 
night she seemed very strange, and when the news came 
that the poor gentleman was murdered she seemed mad 
to get away, and she packed her box and went away 
early next morning without her wages?” 


132 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER? 


<( Have you got her address?” said Mr. Holt, address- 
ing an invisible body. 

“ Yes, sir;” and she gave it. 

Mr. Holt wrote it carefully down in his pocket-book. 

Then he turned to Hetty. 

“You have saved her,” he said — “you, her best and 
truest friend.” 

“I say,” said Chummy, surveying his wife’s costume 
with looks of shame-faced misery, now that the excite- 
ment was past, “ hadn’t I better take Mr. Holt down, 
and see that he gets something to eat?” 

“ I have to find Jane Dowse to-night,” said Mr. Holt; 
but when he would have bade his unwilling hostess good- 
night, she put her hands behind her and buttoned up her 
lips tight. 

Yet when he had gone she began to understand why 
such a man should have obtained an ascendency, and kept 
it, over such a woman as Berry. 

* * * * * * * 

Mr. Holt had found Jane Dowse by morning, and taken 
down her reluctant evidence in the presence of witnesses. 
She said that on the night of Mr. Booth’s death she 
passed his door, and, hearing him call out, she went in. 
He was sitting at a table, writing. She did not notice 
any bottle there until after she had waited, as he bade 
her, a few minutes, while he went on writing; then he 
poured something into a wine-glass, and immediately 
afterward asked her if she would sign her name in a cor- 
ner of the paper upon which he had been writing. She 
did so, and he gave her a guinea. Directly she got out- 
side the door she felt frightened at what she had done, for 
he looked like death, and she didn’t know what she might 
have put her name to. 

When she heard that he was dead, she was more fright- 
ened still, and rather than be dragged up by a policeman 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 133 

to tell all she knew, resolved to go away, and did so next 
morning. When she found there was no hue and cry af- 
ter her, she stopped quietly at home, and had been there 
ever since. She couldn’t say why she had been such a 
fool as to sign it, but she pitied the poor gentleman, and 
she thought his wife was a bad woman to be carrying on 
with another gentleman when any one could see her hus- 
band was dying. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

“O! sweetest sweet, and fairest fair, 

Of truth and worth beyond compare, 

Thou art the cause of all my care, 

Since first I loved thee ! ” 

A man was sitting in a railway carriage, with a smoothed- 
out scroll of papers in his hand. 

They were headed “My Confession,” and ran thus: — 

“I loved him at first sight — I love him now. I was no 
weak girl allowing myself to fall under his influence be- 
fore we had exchanged a dozen words, nor was I a light 
woman ready to encourage the insolence of any man who 
deigned to admire and covet me. But I was not blind, 
and from the first I felt my danger. Afterward, when I 
met him oftener, his gentleness, his patience, the splendid 
quality of his intellect won my respect, and while I con- 
stantly took fresh delight in his company, my fear of him 
gradually subsided. Then there came a break in our com- 
panionship, for months I did not see him, but day and 
night I longed, I yearned for a sight of his face, for the 
sound of his voice. I knew then that it was not for his 
intellect, for his charm of manner I loved him, but for 
himself. One day, in a moment of madness, I wrote to 
him, and asked him to come and see me. He came. I 
knew that he loved me, and each day I admired more 
and more his reticence and self-control^ for he must have 


134 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


known that I loved him too. My love was profoundly 
selfish. It was as if I had said to him ‘ I do not care if 
you are happy — I do not care if you suffer — I only want to 
see you, to be near you, I want my joy all to myself, and 
you shall neither touch nor share it.’ I was so proud that, 
like Craddock’s wife, I could have put the magic mantle 
on, and it would not have done more than crinkle at the 
hem! I was exulting in my outward purity when at heart 
all was sin; but one day a punishment came. He kissed 
me. Oh! my God, shall I ever forget the shame, the out- 
rage of that kiss — I felt as lost a creature as if T had de- 
liberately dishonored my husband; it was as if an outward 
seal had been set to my inward vileness. 

“ I sunk down insensible at his feet. Three days later 
he called, and I saw him, and I forgave him. We went 
back to our old position toward each other, but it was 
not the same. The love that is always kept hungry is the 
keenest, the fiercest; yet it will sob and moan as piteously 
as any forsaken, starving child — and the elements of 
fierceness die out in the helpless longing, the unsatisfied 
moan — it is then that the greatest danger comes; it is the 
weakness that betrays — and it is then that temptation 
seizes and grips you with a giant’s strength. 

“I thought that out of sheer love for me he would not 
again cross the line that he knew to be marked between 
us; but one might as well try, with Canute, to stop the 
sea-waves, as to hold back the fully aroused passion of a 
man who knows his love is returned. So, just as I was 
growing happy again, he broke out. 

“ He had come up with me to my attic studio, and 
when he presently shut tne door behind him, a terrible 
feeling of fear, almost of physical fear, came over me. 

“ ‘ We will go down now,’ I said; but, as I passed him, 
he caught me in his arms. What does a man say at such 
a time as this? What does the woman say? Is she guilty 
because she only yields, stupefied, to the torrent of his 


MXJRDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 135 

words, the iron strength of his embrace, while her lips are 
dumb and cold beneath the passion of his? 

“ I let him kiss me, I let him hold me in his arms — let 
those sins be written up against me at the Day of Judg- 
ment. I had not the strength of will or body to thrust 
him back. But for those few moments I have suffered, 
and shall suffer, an endless expiation. Thank God for 
this, that there was no touch of the brute in his nature, 
and he could forgive me even when I sent him from me. 

“ When he had gone away — ah! how many times did 
he come back to kiss my hands, my hair, the very folds 
of my dress, while I longed to take that dark head on my 
breast and forget everything save that we loved one 
another — I sat for hours, cold and tearless, a poor sur- 
vivor of a great victory. 

******* 

“ My husband and I went to Ladisloes next day. The 
dreary change that had come over him of late grew darker 
there, but he denied that he was ill, and sat longer over 
his books day and night. For hours and hours together 
I wandered about the grounds; I stood in the dark to lis- 
ten to the groans made by the ancient boughs as the wind 
caused them to creak against each other, and I looked for 
the ghost everywhere, inside the house and out, and never 
found her. I could not tempt my husband abroad; some- 
how, the sunny side of the world, the bright side that 
makes us love it, and our fellow-creatures and ourselves, 
had never been turned to him. He had walked so long- 
in the shadow that he had got accustomed to its coldness 
and gloom, and he expected others to walk in it too, and 
never miss the light of day. All his thoughts were retro- 
spective, all his habits were sedentary. Nature had no 
charms for him, he would turn from its utmost beauty to 
one of his books, and the dullest page of science was 
brighter to him than the most glorious one he could read 
out of doors, or in a human face. 


136 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


“I said to him one day, ‘Let me go out as house-maid 
or nurse for six months; this silence and solitude is kill - 
me.’ I thought there was something strange in his look 
as he said, ‘ I shall not keep you here very long, and then 
you can go back to town or where you please.’ 

“ If I had known then — but I did not. I only felt that 
in my hour of direst need I was alone, with no hand out- 
stretched to save me. Perhaps the drop, the fall, from a 
keen intellectual life was too great; and the silence, the 
melancholy of the place, gradually brought me into that 
frame of mind when the idea of suicide woos you gently 
to your doom. That deadly restlessness had come over 
me, when the soul forever pursues the body, and will give 
it no peace; when the only remedy is pure hard work, 
leaving no time for thought, no cessation from toil, till 
the aching muscles force you into exhausted sleep — then 
to rise languidly at morning, muttering a prayer, then on, 
on with the blessed thought that night comes at last, and 
with it, peace. 

“ But that relief of work was denied me, and gradually, 
as my soul pressed more and more intolerably upon my 
body, I felt the lodging inadequate to it, and after a long 
and deadly struggle, the only escape possible to me oc- 
curred, and I seized upon it. For a time I was mad in 
the ecstasy of knowing such relief near at hand. I was 
blind to the awful crime to which my incurable passion 
had brought me. I walked on air, and with the tender- 
ness of a mother who knows she must soon leave her 
wayward, unkind child, I sought my husband's company 
more, and as the coldness between us gradually broke 
down, I learned to know that lonely, proud, faithful heart 
as I had never known it before. 

“ ‘Do you suppose that I am blind?' he said, one day, 
‘that I have not felt the coldness of your kiss, long before 
you knew it yourself? You used to love me, but you do 
not love me now. If you creep into my arms it is for 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


137 


safety, not from love.’ And I could not answer him. I 
knew that the spontaniety of our love was gone, and that 
I could not bring it back. But when his kind arms 
closed around me, my sin against him pressed but the 
harder upon me. His had been the faithful heart — mine 
the exacting one. He had not known my needs, or he 
would have gratified them. In his solitude, in his great- 
ness of soul, he had sufficed to himself; while I — what 
resources had I found? I felt like one who had silently 
registered sins against a man of which he is quite uncon- 
scious, and who had preserved his attitude of love and 
faithfulness toward me, while secretly I was a traitor. I 
remembered all the hard words I had spoken to him, all 
my sins of omission and commission came freshly to my 
mind. The thousand memories that bind a woman’s 
heart to the only man who has ever won her, were drawn 
closer then; and I saw him only as the one whom I had 
preferred to all others, the man who had loved me with 
his whole strength always, though his habits and ways of 
thought accorded with mine so ill. I clung to the gaunt 
hand that each day grew thinner, as if it could save me 
from the abyss into which I was falling. But, as it 
chanced, it was from him that I got the last impetus 
which brought my meditated crime into a possible fact. 

I said to him one day, ‘ You do not seem to get any better 
— are you really ill?’ Then he told me very quietly that 
for months, even years, he had been ill of an incurable 
complaint, and that he could not possibly live many weeks 
longer. No tears came to my eyes, no sob rose in my 
throat as I put my arms round his neck. I felt only that 
we were bound for the same haven, and that it mattered 
little which of us should reach it first to await the other* 
In those last days I got to understand how intrinsically 
good he was. He would not deliberately set to work to 
get another woman away from her husband, and if he were 
selfish, all his vices were home ones.. I began to contrast 


138 MURDEli Oil MANSLAUGHTER? 

his patience, his reticence under mental and bodily suffer- 
ing, with those brilliant qualities that I had admired in 
Hugo Holt; and gradually I felt myself passing from 
under the spell of a fascination that my judgment had 
never recognized, though my heart did. One evening I 
was wandering as usual in the grounds, and finding the 
door of the grapery open, I went aimlessly in. A step 
followed me: in a moment, before he spoke, before I saw 
him in the half-light, I knew that it was Hugo Holt. No 
matter what he said. I was taken by surprise, probably 
1 had been half mad for weeks, and feeling that it was the 
last time I should ever behold him, I let him plead to me 
again as he had pleaded before. I even seemed to listen, 
and to admit the possibility of my guilt when I said ‘ I 
might— but I should kill myself after . 9 Howtyego heard 
the words, though I did not know it then. Did some 
devil enter my soul and urge, ‘ Your husband is dying, 
this man loves you — will love you always so long as you 
hold yourself out of his reach; then live, and gather up 
such poor scraps of happiness as remain to you’? But he 
whispered in vain, and when at last I had forced Hugo 
Holt away from me, my purpose was unaltered. That 
night I went to my husband and told him everything 
from the beginning, of my unfaith to him, of how my 
lips had been soiled by another man, of how I had loved 
that man, and, God forgive me, how I loved him still. 

“ He heard me in silence, as I told him, with my head 
bowed upon his knees; then he lifted me as if I had been 
a child, in his long thin arms, and held me on his breast. 
Oh! my dear! my love! how I loved him then! The last 
spark of unholy passion died out of my heart then, and 
the link that had bound me to Hugo Holt was broken. 
From that night I was seldom a minute out of my hus- 
band’s company. I witnessed his agonies, I did all in my 
power to assuage them, and I cam6 to know that, no matter 
how feeble and careless a husband’s hold on you may be, 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 139 

it is stronger in the end than a lover’s most passionate grip 
of you. 

“ One day I went to London, and bought the poison. I 
meant to take it at about the time he died, whether before 
or after, I had not made up my mind. I believed then, 
and I believe now, that he would rather know me dead 
than left alone at the mercy of my own heart, and Hugo 
Holt. 

******* 

“ Oh, God! Oh, God! it is all over, and he is lying 
dead before me, slain by the poison that I had poured out 
for myself. Two hours ago I went to the room I use as 
studio, and looked at the bottle, smelt it, then, rehearsing 
what was to come later, I actually poured the acid out into 
a wine-glass, and lifted it to my lips. A strong shudder 
passed through me, and in one lightning moment I saw 
myself a coward , the basest thing in creation — all the 
principles of my youth, however blurred by my erring 
ways, rose sternly up in me — and I saw how by this last 
irreparable sin I was thrusting away the mercy that might 
yet be shown to me. I poured the poison back, and went 
out with uncovered head into the wild night — when I re- 
turned there was no longer any fear for me: the idea of 
suicide is one that, once thoroughly scourged and driven 
out of a human soul, never returns. 

“ I went straight to my husband’s room. He was 
sitting with his head bowed forward, resting on the table. 

‘ Ned,’ I cried, and kneeled down beside him, and I 
lifted his weak arm, and twined it round my neck. As 
his head sunk on my shoulder, he tried to press his lips 
against my neck. 4 Berry — my little Berry — ’ he said, 
faintly, and died. 

* ****** 

“ His sufferings are over; he is at rest at last. It was 
by my sin, by the unpardonable crime I had contemplated, 
he died; and, for that sin, I reckon myself his murderess, 


140 MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

and will die also. I shall fold his confession inside these 
pages, and then I shall hide them away. If they are 
found after my death, I entreat that they may be burned 
unread.” 


CHAPTER IX. 

“ 0 Helen fair, beyond compare! 

I’ll weave a garland of thy hair 
Shall bind my heart for evermair, 

Until the day I dee!” 

The door was shut upon them. For the last time in 
their lives, the two who had loved each other (though in 
such different degree) so unwisely and so passionately, 
were face to face. 

She was standing as he had seen her stand months ago, 
her head against the wall, her arms hanging by her sides; 
she was as helpless, as much in his power now as then. 
Yet he could more easily have struck than have kissed 
her. 

“ You have found something,” she said, “ but it will 
not save me. I wrote it at Ladisloes. I woke up to find 
it gone, but I dreamed that I hid it in a cupboard in the 
haunted room — and since I knew you, I have taken to 
walking in my sleep. But you will give it to me” (and 
she held out her hand), “for it is mine.” 

“ No,” he said, “ your husband’s confession is not yours. 
It is in the hands of the Home Secretary, and you are a 
free woman.” 

She looked at him with eyes in which horror and pain 
struggled for the mastery; so might a man well-nigh 
frozen to death look at those who brought him back the 
agony of life when all he longed for was sleep. 

“Free!” she said — “and for what?” 

lie stood silent, with no question in his heart of her 


MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 


141 


temptation now. Her purity had made his, and all that 
was best and most chivalrous in the man came up then, 
and his nature was a noble one, however hardened by the 
world. 

Her mouth trembled. 

“I called you respectable once,” she said, “yet in the 
face of everything — believing me to be a guilty woman, 
you defended me.” 

He made no answer. 

“And you did believe me guilty?” 

“Yes.” ' 

“You thought that I had killed him — and for vou?” 
“I did.” 

“ And you could love me still?” 

“ I shall love you always. You told me once that you 
would never belong to two men, and I knew that you 
loved me, not him.” 

“ Yes,” she said, “ and I told you if I were a free 
woman, I would rather be your mistress than another 
man’s wife. I was mad then — but I will expiate every- 
thing in the end.” 

He said, “ You have still the best part of your life 
before you.” 

“ Life!” she said, and shuddered, “and he — it was like 
betraying a helpless child who trusts you — he went out of 
the world lonely, deserted, and until I find him, I shall 
know no peace. When I told him that I loved you, he 
did not rail against you; he only said, ‘I don’t think he 
has behaved well;’ but I know that if an effort of will 
could have saved his life, he would not have made it after 
he knew my unfaithfulness of heart toward him. And 
now, good-bye.” 

He did not stir as she held out both her hands. For a 
moment she looked at him, then with a sob of divine love, 
of pity, she pressed his head to her bosom, and closed her 
arms about his neck. Here was love, pure love, with no 


142 MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER ? 

touch of a baser instinct to deform it, and in those brief 
moments when his dark head rested on her breast, he 
felt all the honor that her love had bestowed on him. 
And then, for the first, last time in her life, she kissed 
him. 

4s ***** * 

There is a woman living now in a far distant land, who, 
having taken up her cross, not sadly, but bravely, and 
with some of the past sunshine in her life in her face, is, 
perchance, for the one great sin of her youth forgiven. 

And perhaps one of the least ignoble chapters in Hugo 
Holt’s life is that in which a woman loved him, purely, 
wholly, and to her own most bitter loss. 

In the midst of his crowded life, perhaps he remembers 
her. When the work and enjoyment of the day are done, 
I think that a dumb and gentle shadow steals to his side, 
and bides awhile with him, and her name is Berry — and 
that sometimes with locked doors he draws from a 
secret place some pages upon which the ink is changing 
color, but which are stamped undyingly with a love that 
nothing on earth or in heaven can break. 


THE END. 


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wishing the Pocket Edition of this Seaside Library must be careful to 
mention the Pocket Edition, otherwise the Ordinary Edition will be sent. 

Newsdealers wishing catalogues of The Seaside Library, Pocket Edition, 
bearing their imprint, will be supplied on sending their names, addresses, and 
number required. Address 

GEORGE MUNllO, Muuro’s Publishing House, 

P. O. Box 3751. 17 to 27 Vande water Street, N. Y. 


LIST OF AUTHORS. 


Works by the author of “ Addie’s 
Husbaud.” 

388 Addie’s Husband; or, Through 

Clouds to Sunshine 10 

504 My Poor Wife 10 

Works by the author of “ A Great 
Mistake.” 

244 A Great Mistake 20 

246 A Fatal Dower 10 

37'2 Phyllis’ Probation 10 

461 His Wedded Wife 20 

588 Cherry 10 

Mrs. Alexander’s Works. 

5 The Admiral’s Ward 20 

17 The Wooing O’t 20 

62 The Executor 20 

180 Valerie’s Fate 10 

229 Maid, Wife, or Widow? 10 

236 Which Shall it Be? 20 

330 Mrs. Vereker’s Courier Maid... 10 

400 A Second Life 20 

564 At Bay 10 

Alison’s Works. 

194 “So Near, and Yet So Far!”. .. 10 

278 For Life and Love 10 

481 The House That Jack Built 10 

F. Anstey’s Works. 

59 Vice Versa 20 

225 The Giant’s Robe 20 

503 The Tinted Venus. A Farcical 
Romance 10 

R. M. Ballantyne’s Works. 

89 The Red Eric 10 

95 The Fire Brigade 10 

96 Erling the Bold 10 

Anne Beale’s Works. 

188 Idonea 20 

199 The Fisher Village 10 


Basil’s Works. * 

344 “ The Wearing of the Green ”.. 20 

547 A Coquette’s Conquest 20 

585 A Drawn Game 20 

M. Betham-Edwards’s Works. 

273 Love and Mirage; or, The Wait- 
ing on an Island 10 

579 The Flower of Doom, and Other 

Stories 10 

594 Doctor Jacob 20 

AValter Besant’s Works. 

97 All in a Garden Fair 20 

137 Uncle Jack 10 

140 A Glorious Fortune 10 

146 Love Finds the Way, and Other 

Stories. By Besant and Rice 10 

230 Dorothy Forster 20 

324 In Luck at Last 10 

William Black’s Works. 

1 Yolande 20 

18 Shandon Bells 20 

21 Sunrise : A Story of These 

Times 20 

23 A Princess of Thule 20 

39 In Silk Attire 20 

44 Macleod of Dare 20 

49 That Beautiful Wretch 20 

50 The Strange Adventures of a 

Phaeton 20 

70 White Wings: A Yachting Ro- 
mance io 

78 Madcap Violet ’ 20 

81 A Daughter of Hetli [ 20 

124 Three Feathers 20 

125 The Monarch of Mincing Lane. 20 

126 Kilmeny oq 

138 Green Pastures and Piccadilly! 20 
265 Judith Shakespeare: Her Love 

Affairs and Other Adventures 20 
472 The Wise Women of Inverness. 10 
627 White Heather 20 


THE SEASIDE LIBRARY.— Pocket Edition. 


R. D. Blackmore’s Works. 

67 Lorna Doone. 1st half 20 

67 Lorna Doone. 2d half 20 

427 The Remarkable History of Sir 

Thomas Upmore, Bart., M. P. 20 

Miss M. E. Braddon’s Works. 

35 LadyrAudley’s Secret 20 

56 Phantom Fortune 20 

74 Aurora Floyd 20 

110 Under the Red Flag 10 

153 The Golden Calf 20 

204 Vixen 20 

211 The Octoroon 10 

234 Barbara; or, Splendid Misery. . 20 

263 Au Islimaelite 20 

315 The Mistletoe Bough. Edited 

by Miss Braddon 20 

434 Wyllard’s Weird 20 

478 Diavola; or, Nobody ’s* Daugh- 
ter. Part 1 20 

478 Diavola; or, Nobody’s Daugh- 
ter. Part II 20 

480 Married in Haste. Edited by 
Miss M. E. Braddon 20 

487 Put to the Test. Edited by Miss 

M. E. Braddon 20 

488 Joshua Haggard’s Daughter.... 20 

489 Rupert Godwin 20 

495 Mount Royal 20 

496 Only a Woman. Edited by Miss 

M. E. Braddon 20 

497 The Lady’s Mile 20 

498 Ouly^ a Clod 20 

499 The Cloven Foot 20 

511 A Strange World 20 

515 Sir Jasper’s Tenant 20 

524 Strangers and Pilgrims 20 

529 The Doctor’s Wife 20 

542 Fenton’s Quest 20 

544 Cut by the County; or, Grace 

Daruel 10 

548 The Fatal Marriage, and The 

Shadow in the Corner 10 

549 Dudley Carleon ; or. The Broth- 

er's Secret, and George Caul- 
field’s Journey 10 

552 Hostages to Fortune 20 

553 Birds of Prey.. 20 

554 Charlotte's Inheritance. (Se- 

quel to “ Birds of Prey ”) 20 

557 To the Bitter End 20 

559 Taken at the Flood 20 

560 Asphodel 20 

561 Just as I am; or, A Living Lie 20 

567 Dead Men’s Shoes 20 

570 John Marchmont’s Legacy. ... 20 

Works by Charlotte M. Braeme, 
Author of “Bora Thoi-ne,” 

19 Her Mother’s Sin 10 

51 Dora Thorne 20 

54 A Broken Wedding-Ring 20 

68 A Queen Amongst Women 10 

69 Madolin’s Lover 20 

73 Redeemed by Love 20 

76 Wife in Name Only 20 

79 Wedded and Parted 10 

52 Lord Lynne’s Choice 10 


148 Thorns and Orange-Blossoms.. 10 

190 Romance of a Black Veil 10 

220 Which Loved Hi in Best? 10 

237 Repented at Leisure 20 

249 “ Prince Charlie’s Daughter ”. . 10 

250 Sunshine and Roses; or, Di- 

ana’s Discipline 10 

254 The Wife’s Secret, and Fair 

but False 10 

283 The Sin of a Lifetime 10 

287 At War With Herself 10 

288 From Gloom to Sunlight 10 

291 Love’s Warfare 10 

292 A Golden Heart 10 

293 The Shadow of a Sin 10 

294 Hilda 10 

295 A Woman’s War 10 

296 A Rose in Thorns 10 

297 Hilary’s Folly 10 

299 The Fatal Lilies, and A Bride 

from the Sea 10 

300 A Gilded Sin, and A Bridge of 

Love 10 

303 Ingledew House, and More Bit- 

ter than Death 10 

304 In Cupid’s Net 10 

305 A Dead Heart, and Lady Gwen- 

doline’s Dream 10 

306 A Golden Dawn, and Love for 

a Day 10 

307 Two Kisses, and Like no Other 

Love 10 

308 Beyond Pardon 20 

411 A Bitter Atonement 20 

433 My Sister Kate 10 

459 A Woman’s Temptation 20 

460 Under a Shadow 20 

465 The Earl’s Atonement 20 

466 Between Two Loves 20 

467 A Struggle for a Ring 20 

469 Lady Darner’s Secret 20 

470 Evelyn’s Folly 20 

471 Thrown on the World 20 

476 Between Two Sins 10 

516 Put Asunder; or, Lady Castle- 

maine’s Divorce 20 

576 Her Martyrdom . 20 

Charlotte Broute's Works. 

15 Jane Eyre 20 

57 Shirley 20 

Rlioda Broughton’s Works. 

86 Belinda 20 

101 Second Thoughts 20 

227 Nancy 20 

Robert Buchanan’s Works. 

145 “ Storm-Beaten God and The 

Man ." 20 

154 Annan Water 20 

181 The New Abelard 10 

398 Matt : A Tale of a Caravan — 10 

Captain Fred Burnaby’s Works. 

375 A Ride to Khiva 20 

384 On Horseback Through Asia 
Minor 20 


THE SEASIDE LIBRARY.— Pocket Edition. 


Mary Cecil Hay’s Works. 

65 Back to the Old Home 10 

72 Old Myddelton’s Money 20 

196 Hidden Perils 10 

197 For Her Dear Sake 20 

224 The Arundel Motto 10 

281 The Squire’s Legacy 20 

290 Nora’s Love Test 20 

408 Lester’s Secret 20 

Works by the Author of “Judith 
Wynne.” 

332 Judith Wynne 20 

506 Lady Lovelace 20 

William H. G. Kingston’s Works. 

117 A Tale of the Shore and Ocean. 20 

133 Peter the Whaler 10 

Charles Lever’s Works. 

191 Harry Lorrequer 20 

212 Charles O’Malley, the Irish Dra- 
goon. First half 20 

212 Charles O’Malley, the Irish Dra- 
goon. Second half 20 

243 Tom Burke of “Ours.” First 

half 20 

243 Tom Burke of “ Ours.” Sec- 
ond half 20 

Sir E, Bulwer Lytton’s Works. 

40 The Last Days of Pompeii 20 

83 A Strange Story 20 

90 Ernest Maltravers 20 

130 The Last of the Barons. First 

half 20 

130 The Last of the Barons. Sec- 
ond half 20 

162 Eugene Aram 20 

164 Leila ; or, The Siege of Grenada 10 

George Macdonald’s Works. 

282 Donal Grant 20 

325 The Portent 10 

326 Phantastes. A Faerie Romance 

for Men and Women 10 

Florence Marry at’ s Works. 

159 A Moment of Madness, and 

Other Stories 10 

183 Old Coutrairy, and Other 

Stories 10 

208 The Ghost of Charlotte Cray, 

and Other Stories 10 

276 Under the Lilies and Roses.... 10 

444 The Heart of Jane Warner 20 

449 Peeress and Player 20 

Captain Marryat’s Works. 

88 The Privateersman 20 

272 The Little Savage 10 

Helen B. Mathers’ s Works. 

13 Eyre’s Acquittal 10 

221 Cornin’ Thro’ the Rye 20 

438 Found Out 10 


Justin McCarthy’s Works. 

121 Maid of Athens 20 

602 Camiola 20 

Mrs, Alex. McVeigh Miller’s 
Works. 

267 Laurel Vane; or, The Girls’ 

Conspiracy 20 

268 Lady Gay’s Pride; or, The 

Miser’s Treasure 20 

269 Lancaster’s Choice 20 

316 Sworn to Silence; or. Aline 

Rodney’s Secret 90 

Jean Middlemas’s Works. 

155 Lady Muriel’s Secret 20 

539 Silvermead 20 

Alan Muir’s Works. 

172 “Golden Girls ” 20 

346 Tumbledown Farm 10 

Miss Mulock’s Works, 

11 John Halifax, Gentleman 20 

245 Miss Tommy 10 

David Christie Murray’s Works. 

58 By the Gate of the Sea 10 

195 “ The Way of the World ” 20 

320 A Bit of Human Nature 10 


Works by the author of “ My 
Ducats and My Daughter.” 

376 The Crime of Christmas Day. 10 
596 My Ducats and My Daughter. .. 20 

W. E. Norris’s Works. 


184 Thirlby Hall 20 

277 A Man of His Word 10 

355 That Terrible Man 10 

500 Adrian Vidal 20 

Laurence Oliphant’s Works. 

47 Altiora Peto 20 

537 Piccadilly 10 

Mrs. Oliphant’q Works. 

45 A Little Pilgrim 1/ 

177 Salem Chapel 

205 The Minister’s Wife 30 

321 The Prodigals, and Their In- 
heritance 10 

337 Memoirs and Resolutions of 
Adam Graeme of Mossgray, 
including some Chronicles of 

the Borough of Fendie 20 

345 Madam 20 

351 The House on the Moor 20 

357 John 20 

370 Lucy Crofton 10 

371 Margaret Maitland 20 

377 Magdalen Hepburn : A Story of 

the Scottish Reformation. ... 20 


TUE SEASIDE LIBRARY.— Pocket Edition. 


Mrs. Olipliant’s Works— Con- 
tinued. 

402 Lilliesleaf; or, Passages in the 
Life of Mrs Margaret Mait- 


land of Sonnyside 20 

410 Old Lady Mary 10 

52? The Days of My Life 20 

528 At His Gates 20 

568 The Perpetual Curate 20 

569 Harry Muir 20 

603 Agnes. 1st half 20 

603 Agnes. 2d half 20 

604 Innocent. 1st half 20 

604 Innocent. 2d half 20 

605 Ombra 20 

“ Ouida’s ” Works. 

4 Under Two Flags 20 

9 Wanda, Countess von Szalras.. 20 

116 Moths 20 

128 Afternoon and Other Sketches. 10 

226 Friendship 20 

228 Princess Napraxine 20 

238 Pascarel 20 

239 Signa 20 

433 A Rainy June 10 


Jaincs Payn’s Works. 

48 Thicker Than Water 20 

186 The Canon’s Ward 20 

343 The Talk of the Town 20 

57? In Peril and Privation 10 

589 The Luck of the Darrells 20 

Cecil Power’s Works. 

336 Philistia 20 

611 Babylon 20 

Mrs. Campbell Praed’s Works. 

428 Zero: A Story of Monte-Carlo. 10 
477 Affinities 10 


Eleanor C. Price’s Works. 

173 The Foreigners 20 

331 Gerald 20 


Charles Reade’s Works. 

46 Very Hard Cash 20 

98 A Woman-Hater 20 

206 The Picture, and Jack of All 

Trades 10 

210 Readiana: Comments on Cur- 
rent Events 10 

213 A Terrible Temptation 20 

214 Put Yourself in His Place 20 

216 Foul Play 20 

231 Griffith Gaunt; or, Jealousy... 20 

232 Love and Money ; or, A Perilous 

Secret 10 

235 “It is Never Too Late to 
Mend.” A Matter-of-Fact Ro- 
mance 20 


Mrs. J. II. Riddell’s Works. 


71 A Struggle for Fame 20 

593 Berna Boyle 20 

“Rita’s” Works. 

252 A Sinless Secret 10 

446 Dame Durden 20 

598 “ Corinna.” A Study 10 

617 Like Dian’s Kiss 20 

F. W. Robinson’s Works. 

157 Milly’s Hero 20 

217 The Man She Cared For 20 

261 A Fair Maid 20 

455 Lazarus in London 20 

590 The Courting of Mary Smith. .. 20 

W. Clark Russell’s Works. 

85 A Sea Queen 20 

109 Little Loo 20 

180 Round the Galley Fire 10 

209 John Holdsworth, Chief Mate. . 10 

223 A Sailor’s Sweetheart 20 

592 A Strange Voyage 20 

Sir Walter Scott’s Works. 

28 Ivanhoe 20 

201 The Monastery 20 

202 The Abbot. (Sequel to “The 

Monastery ”) 20 

353 The Black Dwarf, and A Le- 
gend of Montrose 20 

362 The Bride of Lammermoor 20 

363 The Surgeon’s Daughter 10 

364 Castle Dangerous 10 

391 The Heart of Mid-Lothian 20 

392 Peveril of the Peak 20 

393 The Pirate 20 

401 Waverley 20 

417 The Fair Maid of Perth; or, St. 

Valentine’s Day 20 

418 St. Ronan’s Weli 20 

463 Redgauntlet. A Tale of the 

Eighteenth Century 20 

507 Chronicles of the Canongate, 
and Other Stories 10 

William Sime’s Works. 

429 Boulderstone ; or, New Men and 

Old Populations 10 

580 The Red Route 20 

597 Haco the Dreamer 10 

Hawley Smart’s Works. 

348 From Post to Finish. A Racing 

Romance 20 

367 Tie and Trick 20 

550 Struck Down 10 

Frank E. Smedley’s Works. 

333 Frank Fairlegh; or, Scenes 
from the Life of a Private 

Pupil 20 

562 Lewis Arundel; or, The Rail- 
road of Life 20 


TBE SEASIDE LIBRARY.— Pocket Edition , 


Eugene Sue’s Works. 

270 The Wandering Jew. Part I... 20 

270 The Wandering Jew. Part II.. 20 

271 The Mysteries of Paris. Part I. 20 
271 The Mysteries of Paris. Part II. 20 

William M. Thackeray’s Works. 


27 Vanity Fair 20 

105 The History of Henry Esmond. 20 

464 The Newcomes. Parti 20 

464 The Newcomes. Part II 20 

531 The Prime Minister (1st half) . . 20 
531 The Prime Minister (2d half) . . 20 

Annie Thomas’s Works. 

141 She Loved Him ! 10 

142 Jenifer 20 

565 No Medium 10 

Anthony Trollope’s Works. 

32 The Land Leaguers 20 

93 Anthony Trollope’s Autobiog- 
raphy 20 

147 Rachel Ray 20 

200 An Old Man’s Love 10 

531 The Prime Minister. 1st half.. 20 
531 The Prime Minister. 2d half. . . 20 

Margaret Veley’s Works, 

298 Mitchelhurst Place 10 

586 “ For Percival ” 20 

Jules Verne’s Works. 

87 Dick Sand; or, A Captain at 

Fifteen 20 

100 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas. 20 
368 The Southern Star ; or, the Dia- 
mond Land 20 

395 The Archipelago on Fire 10 

578 Mathias Sandorf. Illustrated. 

Part 1 10 

578 Mathias Sandorf. Illustrated. 
Part II 10 

lu B. Walford’s Works. 

241 The Baby’s Grandmother 10 

256 Mr. Smith : A Part of His Life . 20 
258 Cousins 20 

F. Warden’s Works. 

192 At the World’s Mercy 20 

248 The House on the Marsh 10 

286 Deldee; or, The Iron Hand 20 

482 A Vagrant Wife 20 

556 A Prince of Darkness 20 

E. Werner’s Works. 

327 Raymond’s Atonement 20 

540 At a High Price 20 

fi. J. Whyte-Melville’s Works. 

409 Roy’s Wife 20 

451 Market Harborough, and Inside 
the Bar 20 

John Strange Winter’s Works. 

492 Mignon ; or, Booties’ Baby. Il- 
lustrated 10 

COO Houp-La. Illustrated 10 


Mrs. Henry Wood’s Works. 

8 East Lynne 20 

255 The Mystery 20 

277 The Surgeon’s Daughters 10 

508 The Unholy Wish 10 

513 Helen Whitney’s Wedding, and 

Other Tales 10 

514 The Mystery of Jessy Page, and 

Other Tales 10 

610 The Story of Dorothy Grape, 

and Other Tales 10 

Charlotte M. Yonge’s Works. 

247 The Armourer’s Prentices 10 

275 The Three Brides 10 

535 Henrietta’s Wish. ATale 10 

563 The Two Sides of the Shield — 2C 


Miscellaneous. 

53 The Story of Ida. Francesca. . 10 
61 Charlotte Temple. Mrs. Row- 

son 10 

99 Barbara’s History. Amelia B. 

Edwards 20 

103 Rose Fleming. Dora Russell.. 10 
105 A Noble Wife. John Saunders 20 

111 The Little School-master Mark. 

J. H. Shorthouse 10 

112 The Waters of Marah. John 

Hill 20 

113 Mrs. Carr’s Companion. M. G. 

Wightwick 10 

114 Some of Our Girls. Mrs. C. J. 

Eiloart 20 

115 Diamond Cut Diamond. T. 

Adolphus Trollope 10 

120 Tom Brown’s School Days at 

Rugby. Thomas Hughes 20 

122 lone Stewart. Mrs. E. Lynn 

Linton 20 

127 Adrian Bright. Mrs. Caddy 20 

149 The Captain’s Daughter. From 

the Russian of Pushkin 10 

150 For Himself Alone. T. W. 

Speight 10 

151 The Ducie Diamonds. C. Blath- 

erwick... :... 10 

156 “For a Dream’s Sake.” Mrs. 

Herbert Martin 20 

158 The Starling. Norman Mac- 
leod, D.D 10 

160 Her Gentle Deeds. Sarah Tyt- 

ler 10 

161 The Lady of Lyons. Founded 

on the Play of that title by 

Lord Lytton 10 

163 Winifred Power. Joyce Dar- 
rell 20 

170 A Great Treason. Mary Hop- 

pus 30 

174 Under a Ban. Mrs. Lodge 20 

176 An April Day. Philippa Prit- 

tieJephson 10 

178 More Leaves from the Journal 
of a Life in the Highlands. 

Queen Victoria 10 

182 The Millionaire 20 

185 Dita. Lady Margaret Majendie 10 


THE SEASIDE LIBRARY.- Pocket Edition 


r 


Miscellaneous— Continued. 

187 The Midnight Sun. Fredrika 

Bremer 10 

198 A Husband’s Story 10 

203 John Bull and His Island. Max 
O’Rell 10 

218 Agnes Sorel. G. P. R. James.. 20 

219 Lady Clare : or, The Master of 

the Forges. From French of 

Georges Ohnet 10 

242 The Two Orphans. D’Ennery. 10 
253 The Amazon. Carl Vosmaer. . 10 
257 Bei'ond Recall. Adeline Ser- 
geant 10 

266 The Water-Babies. Rev. Chas. 

Kingsley 10 

274 Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, 
Princess of Great Britain and 
Ireland. Biographical Sketch 

and Letters 10 

279 Little Goldie : A Story of Wom- 
an’s Love. Mrs. Sumner Hay- 
den 20 

285 The Gambler’s Wife 20 

289 John Bull’s Neighbor in Her 
True Light. A “ Brutal Sax- 
on ” 10 

311 Two Years Before the Mast. R. 

H. Dana, Jr 20 

313 The Lover’s Creed. Mrs. Cash- 
el Hoey 20 

322 A Woman’s Love-Story . 10 

323 A Willful Maid 20 

329 The Polish Jew. (Translated 

from the French by Caroline 
A. Merighi.) Erckmann Chat- 
rian 10 

330 May Blossom ; or, Between Two 

Loves. Margaret Lee 20 

334 A Marriage of Convenience. 

Harriett Jay 10 

335 The White Witch 20 

338 The Family Difficulty. Sarah 

Doudney 10 

340 Under Which King? Compton 

Reade 20 

341 Madolin Rivers; or, The Little 

Beauty of Red Oak Seminary. 

Laura Jean Libbey 20 

347 As Avon Flows. Henry Scott 

Vince 20 

350 Diana of the Crossways. George 

Meredith 10 

352 At Any Cost Edward Garrett. 10 
354 The Lottery of Life. A Story 
of New York Twenty Years . 
Ago. John Brougham 20 


355 The Princess Dagomar of Po- 

land. Heinrich Felbermann. 

356 A Good Hater. Frederick Boyle 

365 George Christy; or, The For- 

tunes of a Minstrel. Tony 
Pastor 

366 The Mysterious Hunter; or, 

The Man of Death. Capt. L. 

C. Carleton 

869 Miss Bretherton. Mrs. Hum- 
phry Ward 


10 

20 


20 

20 

10 


374 The Dead Ilian’s Secret. Dr. 
Jupiter Paeon 20 

381 The Red Cardinal. Frances 

Elliot 10 

382 Three Sisters. Elsa D’Esterre- 

Keeling 10 

383 Introduced to Society. Hamil- 

ton Aid 6 10 

387 The Secret of the Cliffs. Char- 
lotte French 20 

389 Ichabod. A Portrait. Bertha 

Thomas 10 

399 Miss Brown. Vernon Lee 20' 

403 An English Squire. C. R. Cole- 
ridge 20 

405 My Friends and I. Edited by 

Julian Sturgis 10 

406 The Merchant’s Clerk. Samuel 

Warren 10 

407 Tylney Hall. Thomas Hood ... 20 
426 Venus’s Doves. Ida Ashworth 

Taylor 20 

430 A Bitter Reckoning. Author 

of “By Crooked Paths ” 10 

432 The Witch’s Head. H. Rider 

Haggard 20 

435 Kl.ytia : A Story of Heidelberg 

Castle. George Taylor 20 

436 Stella. Fanny Lewald 20 

441 A Sea Change. Flora L. Shaw. 20 

442 Ranthorpe. George Henry 

Lewes 20 

443 The Bachelor of the Albany... 10 
452 In the West Countrie. May 

Crommelin 20 

457 The Russians at the Gates of 

Herat. Charles Marvin 10 

458 A Week of Passion ; or, The 

Dilemma of Mr. George Bar- 
ton the Younger. Edward 

Jenkins 

462 Alice’s Adventures in Wonder- 
land. Lewis Carrol 

With forty-two illustrations 

by John Tenniel 20 

468 The Fortunes, Good and Bad, 
of a Sewing-Girl. Charlotte 
M. Stanley 10 


473 A Lost Son. Mary Linskill 10 

474 Serapis. An Historical Novel. 

George Ebers 20 

479 Louisa. Katharine S. Macquoid 20 

483 Betwixt My Love and Me 10 

485 Tinted Vapours. J. Maclaren 

Cobban 10 

491 Society in London. A Foreign 

Resident.. 10 

493 Colonel Enderby’s Wife. Lucas 

Malet 20 

501 Mr. Butler’s Ward. F. Mabel 

Robinson 20 

510 A Mad Love. Author of “ Lover 

and Lord” 10 

512 The Waters of Hercules 20 

504 Curly : An Actor’s Story. John 

Coleman 10 

505 The Society of London. Count 

Paul Vasili 10 

509 Nell Haffenden. Tighe Hopkins 20 


THE SEASIDE LTD BA B Y . — Pocket Edition. 


Miscellaneous— Continued. 

518 The Hidden Sin 

519 James Gordon’s Wife 

520 Madame De Fresnel. E. Fran- 

ces Poynter 

532 Arden Court. Barbara Graham 

530 Dissolving Views. By Mrs. An- 
drew Lang 

545 Vida’s Story. By the author of 

“ Guilty Without Crime ” 

546 Mrs. Keith’s Crime. A Novel . . 

533 Hazel Kirk e. Marie Walsh 

560 The Royal Highlanders ; or, 

The Black Watch in Egypt. 

James Grant 

571 Paul Crew’s Story. Alice Co : 
my ns Carr 



575 

20 


20 

GO 

iO 

20 

582 

20 

583 

10 

584 


595 

10 


10 

599 

20 

612 

20 

614 

10 

- 


The Finger of Fate. Captain 

Mayne Reid 20 

The Betrothed. (I Promessi 
Sposi.) Allessandro Manzoni 20 
Lucia, Hugh and Another. Mrs. 

J. H. Needed 20 

Victory Deane. Cecil Griffith . . 20 

Mixed Motives 10 

A North Country Maid. Mrs. 

H. Lovett Cameron 20 

Lancelot Ward, M.P. George 

Temple 10 

My Wife’s Niece. By the author 
of “ Dr. Edith Romney ” 20 


No. 99. Arthur Griffiths 10 


The foregoing works, contained in The Seaside Library, Pocket Edition, 
are for sale by all newsdealers, or will be sent to any address, postage free, on 
receipt of price. Parties ordering by mail ivill please order by numbers. Ad- 
dress 

GEORGE MUNRO, 

MUNRO’S PUBLISHING HOUSE, 

P. O. Box 3751. 17 to 27 Vandewater Street, N. Y. 


THE SEASIDE LIBRARY. 


CLOTH EDITION— HANDSOMELY BOUND. 


CHARLES DICKENS’S WORKS. 


Martin Chuzzlewit 50c 

David Copperfield 50c 

Dombey and Son 50c 

Nicholas Nickleby 50c 


Pickwick Papers 

Bleak House 

Our Mutual Friend 


50c 

50c 

50c 


Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. By Lewis Carroll. 

With forty-two illustrations by John Tenniel 50c 


The Publisher will send any of the above works by mail, postage 
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GEORGE MUNRO, 

Munko’s Publishing House, 

P. O. Box 3751. 17 to 27 Vandewater Street N. Y. 


THE SEASIDE LIBRARY.— Pocket Edition. 


NO. PRICE. 

569 Harry Muir. By Mrs. Oliphaut 30 

570 John Marchmont's Legacy. By 

Miss M. E. Braddon 20 

571 Paul Crew’s Story. By Alice 

Comyns Carr 10 

572 Healey. By Jessie Fothergill.. 20 

573 Love’s Harvest. B. L. Farjeon 20 

574 The Nabob: A Story of Parisian 

Life and Manners. By Al- 
phonse Daudet 20 

575 The Finger of Fate. By Cap- 

tain Mayne Reid 20 

576 Her Martyrdom. By Charlotte 

M. Braeme, author of “ Dora 
Thorne” 20 

577 In Peril and Privation. By 

James Payn 10 

578 Mathias Sandorf. By Jules 

Verne. Part I. (Illustrated).. 10 
578 Mathias Sandorf. By Jules 

Verne. Part II. (Illustrated) 10 

578 Mathias Sandorf. By Jules 

Verne. Part III. (Illustrated) 10 

579 The Flower of Doom, and Other 

Stories. By M. Betham-Ed- 


wards 10 

580 The Red Route. By William 

Sime 20 

581 The Betrothed. (I Promessi 

Sposi.) Allessandro Manzoni 20 

582 Lucia, Hugh and Another. By 

Mrs. J. H. Needed 20 

583 Victory Deane. Cecil Griffith . . 20 

584 Mixed Motives 10 

585 A Drawn Game. By Basil 20 

586 ‘‘For Percival.” By Margaret 

Veley 20 

587 The Parson o’ Dumford. By G. 

Manville Fenn 20 

588 Cherry. By the author of “ A 

Great -Mistake ” 10 

589 The Luck of the Darrells. By 

James Payn 20 

590 The Courting of Mary Smith. 

By F. W. Robinson 20 

591 The Queen of Hearts. By Wil- 

kie Collins 20 

592 A Strange Voj r age. By W. 

Clark Russell 20 

593 Berna Boyle. By Mrs. J. H. 

Riddell 20 

594 Doctor Jacob. By Miss Betham- 

Ed wards 20 

595 A North Country Maid. By Mrs. 

H. Lovett Cameron 20 

596 My Ducats and My Daughter.. 20 

597 Haco the Dreamer. By Will- 

iam Sime 10 

598 Corinna. By “Rita.” 10 


PRICE. 

599 Lancelot Ward, M. P. By 

George Temple 10 

600 Houp-La. By John Strange 

Winter. (Illustrated) 10 

601 Slings and Arrows, and Other 

Stories. By Hugh Comvay, 
author of “ Called Back ” 10 

602 Camiola: A Girl With a Fort- 

une. By Justin McCarthy. . . 20 

603 Agnes. Mrs. Oliphant. 1st half 20 

603 Agnes. Mrs. Oliphant. 2d half 20 

604 Innocent: A Tale of Modern 

Life. By Mrs. Oliphant. 1st 

half 20 

604 Innocent: A Tale of Modern 
Life. By Mrs. Oliphant. 2d 
half 20 

606 Mrs. Hollyer. By Georgiana M. 

0 ra j 20 

607 Self- Doomed. By B. L. Farjeon 10 

608 For Lilias. By Rosa Noucliette 

Carey 20 

609 The Dark House : A Knot Un- 

raveled. By G. Manville Fenn 10 

610 The Story of Dorothy Grape 

and Other Tales. By Mrs. 


Henry Wood 10 

611 Babylon. By Cecil Power .20 

/no nr tt ir: .i _ * 


612 My Wife’s Niece. By the au- 

thor of “ Dr. Edith Romney ” 20 

613 The Ghost’s Touch, and Percy 

* V T). i. T> "ITT* - 


and the Prophet. By Wilkie 

Collins 10 

614 No. 99. By Arthur Griffiths... 10 

616 The Sacred Nugget. By B. L. 

Farjeon 20 

617 Like Dian’s Kiss. By “ Rita ”. 20 

618 The Mistletoe Bouah. Christ- 

mas, 1885. Edited by Miss M. 

E. Braddon 20 

619 Joy; or, The Light of Cold- 

Home Ford. By May Crom- 
melin 20 

620 Between the Heather and the 

Northern Sea. M. Linskill. . . 20 

621 The Warden. By Anthony 

Trollope 10 

623 My Lady’s Money. By Wilkie 

Collins 10 

625 Erema; or. My Father’s Sin. 

By R. D. Blaekmore 20 

627 White Heather. By William 

Black 20 

628 Wedded Hands. A Novel 20 

629 Cripps, the Carrier. By R. D. 

Blaekmore 20 

635 Murder or Manslaughter? By 

Helen B. Mathers 10 


LATEST ISSUES. 

NO. 


The foregoing works, contained in The Seaside Library, Pocket Edition, 
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THE NEW YORK FASHION BAZAR 


BOOK OF THE TOILET. 

PRICE 25 CENTS. 

THIS IS A LITTLE BOOK 

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FOR THE 

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IT CONTAINS FULL DIRECTIONS FOR ALL THE 

ARTS AND MYSTERIES OF PERSONAL DECORATION, 

AND FOR 

Increasing the Natural Graces of Form and Expression. 

ALL THE LITTLE AFFECTIONS OF THE 

Sinn, lEHIalr, ZE 37-03 and. Bod.37 

THAT DETRACT FROM APPEARANCE AND HAPPINESS 

Are Made the Subjects of Precise and Excellent Recipes. 

Ladies Are Instructed How to Reduce Their Weight 

Without Injury to Health and Without Producing 
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NOTHING- NECESSARY TO 

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For sale by all Newsdealers, or sent to any address on receipt of 25 cent*, 
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Old Sleuth Library 


A Series of the Most Thrilling Detective 
Stories Ever Published! 


NO. PRICE. 

1 Old Sleuth the Detective 10c 

2 The King of the Detectives 10c 

3 Old Sleuth’s Triumph. First half 10c 

3 Old Sleuth’s Triumph. Second half 10c 

4 Under a Million Disguises 10c 

5 Night Scenes in New York 10c 

6 Old Electricity, the Lightning Detective 10c 

7 The Shadow Detective. First half 10c 

7 The Shadow Detective. Second half 10c 

8 Red-Light Will, the River Detective 10c 

0 Iron Burgess, the Government Detective 10c 

10 The Brigands of New York 10c 

11 Tracked by a Ventriloquist 10c 

12 The Twin Detectives 10c 

13 The French Detective 10c 

14 Billy Wayne, the St. Louis Detective 10c 

15 The New York Detective 10c 

16 O’Neil McDarragh, the Irish Detective 10c 

17 Old Sleuth in Harness Again 10c 

18 The Lady Detective 10c 

19 The Yankee Detective 10c 

20 The Fastest Boy in New York 10c 

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22 Nighthawk, the Mounted Detective 10c 

23 The Gypsy Detective 10c 

The Publisher will send any of the above works by mail, postage 
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JUST ISSUED. 


JUST ISSUED. 


JULIET CORSON’S 

NEW FAMILY COOK BOOK. 

BY MISS JULIET CORSON, 

Author of “ Meals for the Million,” etc., etc. 
SUPERINTENDENT OF THE NEW YORK SCHOOL OF COOKERY. 


PRICE: HANDSOMELY BOUND IN CLOTH, $1.00. 

A COMPLETE COOK BOOK 

For Family Use in City and Country. 

CONTAINING 

PRACTICAL RECIPES AND FULL AND PLAIN DIREC- 
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IN AMERICAN HOUSEHOLDS. 

The Best and Most Economical Methods of Cooking Meats, Fish, 
Vegetables, Sauces, Salads, Puddings and Pies. 

How to Prepare Relishes and Savory Accessories, Picked-up Dishes, 
Soups, Seasoning, Stu fling and Stews. 

IIow to Make Good Bread, Biscuit, Omelets, Jellies, Jams, Pan- 
cakes, Fritters and Fillets. 


Miss Corson is the best American writer on cooking. All of her recipe* 
have been carefully tested in the New York School of Cookery. If her direc- 
tions are carefully followed there will be no failures and no reason for com- 
plaint. Her directions are always plain, very complete, and easily followed. 

Juliet Corson’s New Family Cook Book 

Is sold by all newsdealers. It will be sent, postpaid, on receipt of pric* - 
handsomely bound in cloth, $1.00. Address 

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> Munro’s Publishing House, 

?. O. Box 3751. . 17 to 27 Yandewater St. # N. Y, 


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and, in fact, all kinds of Dialogues and Speeches. The following are the 
titles of the books: 

No. 1. THE FUNNY FELLOW’S DIALOGUES. 

No. 2. THE CLEMENCE AND DONKEY DIALOGUES. 
No. 3. MRS. SMITH S BOARDERS’ DIALOGUES. 
No. 4. SCHOOLBOYS’ COMIC DIALOGUES. 


No. 1. VOT I KNOW ’BOUT GRUEL SOCIETIES SPEAKER. 
No. 2. JOHN B. GO-OFF COMIC SPEAKER. 

No. 3. MY BOY VILHELM’S SPEAKER. 


The above titles express, in a slight degree, the contents of the books, 
which are conceded to be the best series of mirth-provoking Speeches and 
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THE SEASIDE LIBRARY. — Ordinary Edition. 

L - 

481 Vixen 20 

482 The Cloven Foot 20 

500 Joshua Haggard’s Daughter 20 

519 Weavers and Weft 10 

525 Sir Jasper’s Tenant 20 

539 A Strange World 20 

550 Fenton’s Quest ' 20 

562 John Marchmont’s Legacy . 20 

572 The Lady’s Mile 20 

579 Strangers and Pilgrims 20 

581 Only a Woman (Edited by Miss M. E. Braddon) 20 

619 Taken at the Flood 20 

641 Only a Clod 20 

649 Publicans and Sinners 20 

656 George Caulfield’s Journey 10 

665 The Shadow in the Corner 10 

666 Bound to John Company; or, Robert Ainsleigh 20 

701 Barbara ; or, Splendid Misery 20 

705 Put to the Test (Edited by Miss M. E. Braddon) 20 

734 Diavola; or, Nobody’s Daughter. Part I 20 

734 Diavola; or, Nobody’s Daughter. Part II 20 

811 Dudley Carleon 10 

828 The Fatal Marriage 10 

837 Just as I Am; or, A Living Lie 20 

942 Asphodel 20 

1154 The Mistletoe Bough 20 

1265 Mount Royal 26 

1469 Flower and Weed 10 

1553 The Golden Calf 20 

1638 A Hasty Marriage (Edited by Miss M. E. Braddon) 20 

1715 Phantom Fortune 20 

1736 Under the Red Flag 10 

1877 An Ishmaelite 20 

1915 The Mistletoe Bough. Christmas, 1884 (Edited by Miss 

M. E. Braddon) 20 

CHARLOTTE, EMILY, AND ANNE BRONTE’S WORKS. 

3 Jane Eyre (in small type) 10 

396 Jane Eyre (in bold, handsome type) 20 

162 Shilrley 20 

311 The Professor. 10 


The New York Fashion Bazar. 

THE BEST AMERICAN HOME MAGAZINE. 

Price Cents per Copy. Subscription Price $2.50 per Year. 


A handsome chromo will be given free to every yearly subscriber to the 
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The New York Fashion Bazar is a magazine for ladies. It contains 
everything which a lady’s magazine ought to contain. The fashions in dress 
which it publishes are new and reliable. Particular attention is devoted to 
fashions for children of all ages. Its plates and descriptions will assist every 
lady in the preparation of her wardrobe, both in making new dresses and re- 
modeling old ones. The fashions are derived from the best houses and are 
always practical as well as new and tasteful. 

Everj' lady reader of The New York Fashion Bazar can make her own 
dresses with the aid of Munro’s Bazar Patterns. These are carefully cut to 
measure and pinned into the perfect semblance of the garment. They are use- 
ful in altering old as well as in making new clothing. 

The Bazar Embroidery Supplements form an important part of the maga- 
zine. Fancy work is carefully described and illustrated, and new patterns 
given in every number. 

All household matters are fully and interestingly treated. Home informa- 
tion, decoration, personal gossip, correspondence, and recipes for cooking 
have each a department. 

Among its regular contributors are Mary Cecil Hay, “The Duchess,” 
author of “ Molly Bawn,” Lucy Randall Comfort, Charlotte M. BraemE, 
author of “ Dora Thorne,” Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller, Mary E. Bryan, 
author of “Manch,” and Florence A. Warden, author of “ The House on the 
Marsh.” 

The stories published in The New York Fashion Bazar are the best that 
can be had. 

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per copy. Subscription price $2.50 per year. Address 

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THE CELEBRAT ED 

gram 


GRAND, SQUARE AND UPRIGHT PIANOS. 



ARE AT PRESENT THE MOST POPULAR 

AND PREFERRED BY THE LEADING ARTISTS. 

SOHMER «fc CO., Manufacturers, No. 149 to 155 E. 14th Street, N. Y. 


FIRST PRIZE 

DIPLOMA. 

Centennial Exnibi- 
tion, 1876; Montreal, 
1881 and 1882. 


The enviable po- 
sition Sohmer & 
Co. hold among 
American Piano 
Manufacturers is 
solely due to the 
merits of their in- 
struments. 


They are used 
in Conservato- 
ries, Schools and 
Seminaries, on ac- 
count of their su- 
perior tone and 
unequaled dura- 
bility. 

The SOHMER 
Piano is a special 
favorite with the 
leading musicians 
and critics. 


FROM THE 
NERVE -GIVING 
PRINCIPLES OF 
THE OX-BRAIN 
AND THE GERM 
OF THE WHEAT 
AND OAT. 

BRAIN AND NERVE FOOD. 

CROSIIY’S 

VITALIZED PHOSPHITES 

Is a standard with all Physicians who treat 
nervous or mental disorders. It builds up 
worn out nerves, banishes sleeplessness, 
neuralgia and siclt headache. It promotes 
good digestion. It restores the energy lost 
by nervousness, debility, or over-exhaust- 
ion ; regenerates weakened vital powers. 


“ It amplifies bodily and mental power to 
the present generation, and proves the sur- 
vival of the fittest to the next.”— Bismarck. 


“ It strengthens nervous power. It is the 
only medical relief I have ever known for 
an over-worked brain.”— Gladstone. 


“ I really urge you to put it to the test.”— 
Miss Emily Faithful. 

F. CROSBY CO., 56 W. 25th St., N. Y. 

For sale by Druggists, or by mail $1. 



Munro’s Publications. 

THE SEASIDE LIBRARY 

POCKET EDITION. 

MISS M. E. Bit ADDON’S WORKS. 


35 Lady Audley’s Se- 
cret 20 

56 Phantom Fortune. . 20 

74 Aurora Floyd 20 

110 Under the Red Flag 10 
158 The Golden Calf. . . . 20 

204 Vixen 20 

211 The Octoroon 10 

234 Barbara; or, Splen. 

did Misery 20 

2C3 An Ishninelite. . .. . 20 
315 The Mistletoe 
Hough. Edited by 
Miss Hraddon.... 2# 
434 Wyllard’s Weird . . 20 
478 Dinvnln; or, No. 
hody’s Daughter. 

Part 1 20 

478 Diavola; or. No. 
body’s Daughter. 

Part II 20 

480 Married in Haste. 
Edited by Miss 31. 

E. Hraddon 20 

487 Put to the Test. 

Edited by Miss M. 

E. Hraddon 20 

488 Joshua Haggard’s 

Daughter 20 

489 Rupert Godwin 20 

495 31ount Royal...... 20 

496 Only a Woman. 

Edited by Miss 31. 

E. Hraddon 20 


497 The Lady’s Mile... 20 

498 Only a Clod 20 

499 The Cloyen F'oot... 20 

511 A Strange World.. 20 

515 Sir Jasper’s Tenant 20 
524 Strangers and Pil- 
grims 20 

529 The Doctor’s Wife. 2D 

512 F'enlnn’s Quest.... 20 
544 Cut by the County; 

or, Grace Darnel. 10 

548 The Fatal Marriage, 

and The Shadow 
in the Corner. .. . 10 

549 Dudley Carleon; or, 

The lirot lier’s Se- 
cret, and George 
Caulfield's Jour- 

ney 10 

552 Host ages toFortune 20 

558 Birds of Prey 20 

554 Charlotte’s Inher- 
itance. (Sequel to 

“ Birds of Prey.”) 20 
557 To the Hitter End. 20 

559 Taken at the Flood 2*1 

560 Asphodel 20 

561 Just ns I am; or, A 

laying Lie 20 

567 Dead 3Ien*s Shoes.. 20 
570 John .Ylarchmont’s 

Legacy . 20 


Any of the above works will be sent by mail, postpaid, 
on receipt of the price. Address 

GEORGE 3IUNK0, 31 u lire’s Publishing House, 

P. 0. Box 3751. 17 to 27 Vandewnter St., N. Y. 


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